Technology | The Guardian

Under-18s will be allowed to play online games for one hour on Fridays, weekends and holidaysChina has ordered its online gaming companies to further reduce the services they provide to young gamers, in a move intended to curb what the authorities described as “youth video game addiction”.Under the new rule, young gamers are only allowed to spend an hour playing online games on Fridays, weekends and holidays, according to the official Xinhua news agency. Continue reading...

Technology could help power a clean energy transition if it can overcome hurdles of cost, design and opposition from fishingIn the stormy waters of the North Sea, 15 miles off the coast of Aberdeenshire, in Scotland, five floating offshore wind turbines stretch 574 feet (175 metres) above the water. The world’s first floating windfarm, a 30 megawatt facility run by the Norwegian company Equinor, has only been in operation since 2017 but has already broken UK records for energy output.While most offshore wind turbines are anchored to the ocean floor on fixed foundations, limiting them to depths of about 165ft, floating turbines are tethered to the seabed by mooring lines. These enormous structures are assembled on land and pulled out to sea by boats. Continue reading...

• Elizabeth Holmes plans to accuse Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani• Blood-testing startup allegedly misled investors and patientsThe disgraced founder of the blood-testing startup Theranos plans to blame emotional and sexual abuse by her former boyfriend, also a senior executive at the company, at her federal fraud trial beginning next week, according to legal papers published on Saturday.Related: 'Americans have a fascination with fraudsters': Alex Gibney on the fall of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes Continue reading...

Japan’s Aramitsu Kitazono was left with cuts and bruises after being hit by the e-Palette vehicle at the athletes’ villageToyota has apologised for the “overconfidence” of a self-driving bus after it ran over a Paralympic judoka in the athletes’ village and said it would temporarily suspend the service.The Japanese athlete, Aramitsu Kitazono, will be unable to compete in his 81kg category this weekend after being left with cuts and bruises following the impact with the “e-Palette” vehicle. His injuries prompted a personal intervention from the president of Toyota, Akio Toyoda. Continue reading...

No apps can summon couriers in minutes, readers and riders tell of more unusual pandemic ordersMost online deliveries do not come with a health warning from the delivery driver but David Smith received one from a relieved courier who, on handing over Smith’s buzzing box, suggested the bees inside were “a bit angry”.Rather than new clothes or groceries the 60-year-old Smith had turned to the web to buy a bumblebee colony and “villa” to house them. “I decided that my garden needed bees and the bees needed a home,” he says. “They have given me a summer of pleasure and I’ll do it again next year.” Continue reading...

Benyamin Ahmed’s Weird Whales sell in cryptocurrency and ownership is stored on blockchainA 12-year-old boy had made about £290,000 after creating digital pictures of whales and selling tokens of their ownership which are stored on blockchain.Benyamin Ahmed’s collection of pixelated artworks called Weird Whales went viral during the school holidays. His success may be a harbinger of the digital business models that could disrupt the banking sector. Continue reading...

Investigation into US tech firm’s proposed acquisition of British chip designer expectedThe US multinational technology company Nvidia has said it will answer “any concerns” raised by the European Commission as regulators appeared set to launch an investigation into the firm’s proposed $54bn (£39bn) purchase of the British chip designer Arm.The world’s leading maker of graphics and artificial intelligence chips is expected to notify the commission early in September of its plan to purchase Arm, when regulators would probably undertake a preliminary review. Continue reading...

As OnlyFans ended the peen panic, Twitter was united by petty grievances. Think of the level of civilisation we have reachedThanks to the continued commitment of 2021 seemingly to give me simultaneous infarctions in every organ, the week opened with the news that Ian “Beefy” Botham is to become the new trade envoy for Australia and John Cleese is to host a new series looking at “wokeness” and “cancel culture”. Continue reading...

Uber, Lyft and other companies fighting Massachusetts lawsuit that would grant workers status as employeesFelipe Martinez began working full-time as an Uber driver in the Boston, Massachusetts, area in late 2017. He enjoyed the flexibility, being able to work nights while spending days with his children and focusing on his family, but then Uber began unilaterally implementing changes that he says progressively worsened over time.“You start thinking they’re just glitches on the app,” said Martinez, 51, who cited changes such as not being given the rides closest to you, and the removal of unlimited destination filters – which give drivers more ability to set their routes. “Little by little, they started changing the unlimited destination filters and saying that people were abusing them.” Continue reading...

First chickens, and now a worldwide shortage of microprocessors … the word ‘chip’ is the latest word to gain an Armageddon flavourAs if there weren’t enough disasters happening simultaneously, people are now speaking of the present “chipageddon”: the worldwide shortage of microprocessors that is affecting supplies of everything from toasters and games consoles to cars.A silicon “chip” was thus christened in the early 1960s simply because it is a small flat piece of material, like a chip of wood or stone – or, of course, potato – separated by a cutting action (the verb “chop” is related). In a modern chip factory, a small circular wafer of silicon is divided into many chips, each one holding billions of transistors, which is an improvement on the few thousand possible in the early 70s. The ever-flexible “-mageddon” suffix, meanwhile – as in snowmageddon or carmageddon – ultimately takes its form from the Hebrew place name Megiddo in the Book of Revelation’s account of the end of days. Continue reading...

Preliminary lawsuit settlement allows developers to circumvent the tech giant’s lucrative commission systemIndependent developers will be allowed to tell iPhone users about ways of avoiding the “Apple Tax” on their apps for the first time, as part of an out-of-court settlement concluding a class-action lawsuit against the company.The agreement, which is accompanied by a $100m payout from Apple to be distributed among App Store developers who have earned less than $1m over the past six years, represents a small but significant concession from the company, whose iron grip over the App Store has earned it billions in profit alongside accusations of unlawful monopolistic behaviour. Continue reading...

The acclaimed Dropout podcast returns to chronicle legal proceedings against the Theranos founder. Plus: good cops go bad in a new series with shades of The WireThe Dropout (available from 31 August)

The government says an overhaul will boost growth and increase trade – but it must be careful not to go too farThe government has announced plans to reshape the UK’s data laws such as GDPR requirements in an effort, it claims, to boost growth and increase trade post-Brexit. The digital, media and culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, says the UK wants to shape data laws based on “common sense, not box-ticking”. Continue reading...

Culture secretary says move could lead to an end to irritating cookie popups and consent requests onlineBritain will attempt to move away from European data protection regulations as it overhauls its privacy rules after Brexit, the government has announced.The freedom to chart its own course could lead to an end to irritating cookie popups and consent requests online, said the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, as he called for rules based on “common sense, not box-ticking”. Continue reading...

App Store gave 14-year-old’s account access to apps rated ‘17+’ even though it knew user’s self-declared ageApple knowingly lets underage users access apps intended for adults, according to an investigation by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), despite having asked for and recorded their dates of birth.The investigation asserts a disconnect between the information Apple knows about a user, which includes their self-declared age, and the ways it polices age restrictions on its App Store. Continue reading...

Experts say dangerous injuries can occur as videos of people falling off precariously stacked crates go viral on social mediaThe latest challenge to take the internet by storm involves milk crates, balance and some painful falls.In the milk crate challenge, which recently started on TikTok, participants take on a set of milk crates precariously stacked in the shape of a pyramid, attempt to climb to the top and then back down again without toppling over. Continue reading...

U-turn comes after resolution of issues with payment processors, says chief executive of user-generated adult content siteOnlyFans, the user-generated adult content site, is reversing course on plans to ban “sexually explicit” content after securing agreement with its payment processors, it has announced.Last week, OnlyFans said it would ban adult material from 1 October, to the dismay of its users and creators, who argued that doing so risked driving such work underground. Continue reading...

Up for discussion in the Guardian tech newsletter: what lies behind Roblox’s success … the ongoing saga of Facebook’s traffic ‘transparency report’ … and Elon Musk’s ‘onesie’ stuntUser-generated porn site OnlyFans will become … something else, the company announced on Thursday. From 1 October, it will ban “sexually explicit content”, the material that made it a billion-dollar company and refocus on becoming a more mainstream social network.For the uninitiated or those who are pretending to be, OnlyFans is, on a technical level, effectively Instagram combined with Patreon. Creators can post photos, videos and text to the service for their followers to peruse, and they can also lock any of those behind a personal paywall, and even charge to send and receive messages. Continue reading...

PC, Xbox, PlayStation 4; Double Fine/Microsoft

Guardian Australia picture editor Carly Earl explains the dos and don’ts of taking pictures of the moonWhen a full moon rises, many people will pull out their mobile phones to try and get an Instagram-worthy photograph, but unfortunately the moon is really challenging to get a great photo of.Two reasons: it is very far away and unless you have a telephoto lens (which makes the moon appear closer than it is) it will always appear as a very small glowing dot in the frame. Continue reading...

Company’s charitable arm will work with hosts willing to offer spaces, but has yet to say where or for how longAirbnb will help house up to 20,000 Afghan refugees, the company has announced, as part of its Airbnb.org charitable arm.The company will coordinate with Airbnb hosts who want to offer their homes to refugees for free, or at a discounted rate, with the charitable organisation picking up the rest of the bill, as well as any other operational expenditures. The Airbnb co-founder and chief executive, Brian Chesky, will also fund the effort. Continue reading...

Company won licences for Manchester and Sheffield but faces pressure from Chinese governmentChinese Uber rival Didi Chuxing has reportedly suspended plans to launch in the UK and Europe, as the ride-hailing company faces pressure from authorities in its home market.The company’s plans to launch in the UK and Europe have been pushed back at least 12 months, and staff working on the launch have been told they face possible redundancy, the Daily Telegraph first reported. Continue reading...

A thriving new industry, matching people with pro gamers who advise and counsel, has exploded during the pandemicEighteen months ago, Fabio Dores was making good money as a drag queen. Performing under the name Felicity Suxwell, he had a club residency and worked hen nights throughout the UK, attracting enough bookings to quit his day job at a lettings agency. Then lockdown came and everything shut down.Bored at home, he was browsing Facebook and spotted an advertisement for LegionFarm, an online video-game coaching platform that offered to match pro gamers with clients looking to improve their abilities. As a skilled player of battle royale hit Apex Legends, he applied to become a coach. Four months later, he’s in the site’s top 20 pros, making $3,500 a month from around 80 hours of coaching to supplement his re-emerging drag career. Continue reading...

Government wants its own social media platform to replace Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and ZoomEthiopia has begun developing its own social media platform to rival Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, though it does not plan to block the global services, the state communications security agency has said.For the past year Ethiopia has been engulfed in an armed conflict between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which controls the Tigray region in the country’s north. Continue reading...

Constance Bailey, 13, was offered a place at Hammond school but her mother could not afford the £90,000 neededA teenage ballerina with autism from the toughest housing estate in Leeds will be able to take up her place at one of the UK’s most prestigious dance schools after Guardian readers and others chipped in more than £97,000 to cover her fees.Constance Bailey, 13, received a place to study ballet at the Hammond school near Chester but her mother, Laura, a lone parent who works as a PA in the NHS, could not afford the £29,000 annual fees. Continue reading...

Escape to 1980s Oregon, get stuck in an art deco assassin game or liberate a Caribbean island with the help of a dog in this feast of new titlesAn indie game set in a beautiful lake town with a small cast of locals. Driving around and delivering mail in 1980s Oregon is not exactly the usual video game fantasy, but this looks like a calming, intriguing tale about a woman temporarily escaping urban life to revisit her roots.

Latest collaboration puts great sound behind fabric art panel that can be hung or leant against a wallThe latest device from Ikea’s novel partnership with the wifi-speaker maker Sonos is a bit different: a speaker hidden in a picture frame.The Symfonisk picture frame costs £179 ($199) and joins Ikea’s other unusual speakers – one is in a shelf while another is a table lamp – which are all fully compatible with Sonos’s whole-home wireless audio system. Continue reading...

Constance Bailey, from the deprived Seacroft estate, has a place at The Hammond School in Chester but cannot afford the costsBefore she was even accepted into one of the country’s most prestigious ballet schools, Constance Bailey’s audition immediately made her feel different.“Everyone else arrived in these really fancy cars – there were all these BMWs – and they had really nice leotards,” said the 13-year-old, who was wearing her old ballet uniform underneath a secondhand tracksuit. Continue reading...

Whether it’s chatting with small children, planning occasions or finding ways to socialise off-camera, after 18 months of lockdowns we’ve learned what worksWith many parts of Australia still in lockdown, connecting with others can feel increasingly challenging.Whether video calls are stifling your usual banter with friends, or the problem is actually hearing them at all over a patchy internet connection, Zoom fatigue is real. Continue reading...

The startling rise to wealth of the nation’s entrepreneurs has been an affront to Beijing’s political philosophy and increasingly, a threat to the communist partyIn a Politburo group study session on 23 November 2015, China’s president, Xi Jinping, recommended the book Capital in the Twenty-First Century by the French economist Thomas Piketty. “The rich data he used demonstrated that … unrestrained capitalism accelerates wealth inequality … [His] conclusion is worth us pondering on.”Back then, Piketty’s work on inequality was reported all over the world and sparked soul-searching among elites from Wall Street to Main Street. Some were surprised that Xi was paying attention, too. Continue reading...

Guardian Australia picture editor Carly Earl explains the dos and don’ts of taking pictures of this month’s blue moon, also known as a sturgeon moonWith a blue moon rising on Sunday night, many people will pull out their mobile phones to try and get an Instagram-worthy photograph of the August 2021 full moon, also known as a sturgeon moon, but unfortunately the moon is really challenging to get a great photo of.Two reasons: it is very far away and unless you have a telephoto lens (which makes the moon appear closer than it is) it will always appear as a very small glowing dot in the frame. Continue reading...

A workplace in Bucharest filled with anti-virus innovations could become the new normal in office design, its creators hope

They are good for the environment and your wallet but there can be pitfalls. Here’s how to grab a bargain safely in the UKSmartphones are a key part of modern life but with prices routinely in excess of £1,000 for the latest high-end handsets, should you be considering cheaper secondhand or refurbished models instead?These have the potential to be good for your wallet and the planet, as any device that is given a second life instead of being recycled reduces its lifetime environmental impact and, with it, your footprint. Continue reading...

Musk said he would probably launch a humanoid robot prototype next year, which is designed to do 'boring, repetitious and dangerous' work.The billionaire chief executive of Tesla said the robot, which would be about 5ft 8in (1.7 metres) tall and weigh 56kg, would be able to handle tasks such as attaching bolts to cars with a spanner or picking up groceries at shops.Musk was speaking at Tesla's AI Day event, but gave no indication of having made concrete progress on actually building such a machine. At the point when a normal tech launch might feature a demonstration of a prototype model, Musk instead brought out an actor in a bodysuit, who proceeded to breakdance to a soundtrack of electronic dance music

The quest to prevent batteries – rich in raw materials such as cobalt, lithium and nickel – ending up as a mountain of wasteA tsunami of electric vehicles is expected in rich countries, as car companies and governments pledge to ramp up their numbers – there are predicted be 145m on the roads by 2030. But while electric vehicles can play an important role in reducing emissions, they also contain a potential environmental timebomb: their batteries.By one estimate, more than 12m tons of lithium-ion batteries are expected to retire between now and 2030. Continue reading...

She has a learning disability and doesn’t know what in-app purchases areI recently found out that my sister, who has a learning disability, unwittingly spent more than £1,100 on 83 Apple purchases over four weeks. She enjoys playing word games and colouring on her iPad, but has no understanding of money or how in-app purchases work. Until last year, her husband managed her finances, but he died. Most of the transactions were repeat purchases of items called “bundles”. She has no idea what they are and hasn’t downloaded them, but Apple is refusing a refund.

From sexual revolution to the suffragettes, Fry examines Edward VII’s reign in his polished new series. Plus: grim and gruesome deathbed confessionsStephen Fry’s Edwardian Secrets

The agency also dismissed a request by the tech giant that chair Lina Khan recuse herself from the caseThe Federal Trade Commission on Thursday refiled its antitrust case against Facebook, arguing the company holds monopoly power in social networking and renewing the fight to rein in big tech.The agency also dismissed a request from Facebook that its chair, Lina Khan, step aside in the case because of her criticism of them in the past. Continue reading...

CEO says problem is primarily one of ‘vaccine hesitancy’ among the US public, touting platform’s vaccine literacy toolFacebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg skirted a question on Thursday about coronavirus vaccine disinformation on the social network, choosing to phrase the problem instead as primarily one of “vaccine hesitancy” among the US public.In an interview with CBS, which was released on Thursday morning, TV anchor Gayle King pressed Zuckerberg to release information on how many people have viewed and shared Facebook posts containing misinformation about the Covid vaccine. Continue reading...

The executive’s case has sent China’s relations with the US and Canada plummeting with accusations of political arrests and ‘hostage diplomacy’Until she was detained at Vancouver airport in December 2018, Meng Wanzhou was not a household name. But the 49-year-old Huawei executive has now become the face of a high-stakes trilateral dispute between China, Canada and the US.Related: Meng Wanzhou extradition case wraps up but verdict will take months Continue reading...

We ask funny people about what’s funny online. Comedian Alexei Toliopoulos dives so deep he hasn’t seen the surface in yearsMy whole life is a deep dive into the mysteries of pop culture. I don’t think I’ve seen the surface in years and it’s likely I have a permanent case of the bends.

Social security numbers, names, phone numbers and account pins were exposed in some cases, according to the companyA security breach against T-Mobile has exposed personal information, including social security numbers (SSN) and pins in some cases, of more than 40 million users, the company said in a statement on Wednesday morning.The same data for about 7.8 million current T-Mobile post-paid customers appears to be compromised. No phone numbers, account numbers, pins, passwords or financial information from the nearly 50m records and accounts were compromised, it said. Continue reading...

Up for discussion in the Guardian tech newsletter: Instagram, Tik Tok and YouTube implement new rules … CGI CEOs … and unpleasant rightwing ‘lolz’ in KabulI bring good news: regulation works.The last month has brought a flurry of changes to major tech platforms related to child safety online, and specifically to the use and protection of children’s personal data. Continue reading...

I blew the whistle on inauthentic behavior at Facebook. But authentic misinformation is the bigger problem in the westOn 18 May 2021, German YouTuber Mirko Drotschmann tweeted an unusual message: a marketing agency was asking him to share allegedly leaked documents on Covid-19 vaccine deaths. Within a week, French YouTuber Léo Grasset shared similar news. News reports followed: Fazze, a London-based marketing firm with ties to Russia, was offering money to influencers to falsely disparage a Covid-19 vaccine.Related: Facebook shut down our research into its role in spreading disinformation | Laura Edelson and Damon McCoy Continue reading...

Sinead Stubbins is the first to admit she might know a bit too much about the British personality. Is it creepy? Maybe. Maybe not? Who knows• Internet Wormhole is a new column where Guardian Australia writers take you on a tour of their online obsession. Click here for moreLast year, I spent a lot of time staring intently into a computer screen at a person who does not know I exist. Let’s just say if restraining orders were determined by hours spent watching someone’s YouTube channel, British model, designer and TV presenter Alexa Chung would have a pretty decent case against me.Alexa Chung’s YouTube channel started in 2018 with sporadic videos promoting her clothing label and for the last couple of years has included tutorials (for makeup, skincare and how to dress), field trips to fashion shows and interviews with other glamorous, tousled hair women in which they give advice about dating or sleeping or throwing dinner parties from their tranquil, presumably-Santal 33-scented apartments. Continue reading...

Mining cryptocurrency requires lots of cheap energy and many miners have settled on Texas as their destinationIn the middle of rural Texas, a cryptocurrency mine is currently under construction.Hundreds of machines more powerful than the average computer will soon be housed in this 320-acre mining facility in Dickens county, where they will work day and night to solve a complex series of algorithms. If successful, the reward will be newly minted bitcoin, currently worth about $44,000 each. Continue reading...

Lawsuit filed after Blue Origin offered Nasa $2bn if it would change its mind on lunar lander contractJeff Bezos’s Blue Origin has sued the US government over Nasa’s decision to award a $2.9bn lunar lander contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.Related: Billionaire space cowboys could become heroes by focusing on the climate crisis Continue reading...

• Investigators to review 765,000 vehicles made since 2014• NHTSA identifies 11 crashes involving first responder vehiclesThe US government has opened a formal investigation into Tesla’s driver-assistance system known as Autopilot after a series of collisions with parked emergency vehicles.The investigation covers 765,000 vehicles, almost everything that Tesla has sold in the US since the start of the 2014 model year. Of the crashes identified by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) as part of the investigation, 17 people were injured and one was killed. Continue reading...

Schools already have pupils’ mobile phone use under control, say leaders in response to government plansSchool and college leaders have condemned the government’s plan to ban mobile phones from classrooms as outdated and out of touch, arguing that schools should be allowed to decide on appropriate rules.Responding to a Department for Education (DfE) consultation on student behaviour, the Association of School and College Leaders said education leaders already had student mobile phone use under control and warned that some students, such as those caring for a relative, may be disadvantaged by a strict approach. Continue reading...