Technology | The Guardian

Figure for world’s richest person and Tesla CEO could be a record for an individualElon Musk, the world’s richest person and the chief executive of the electric car company Tesla, has said he will pay more than $11bn in tax this year – which could be a record amount of annual tax paid by a single person.Musk, who was earlier this year accused of paying zero federal taxes in 2018 despite sitting on an estimated $243bn (£185bn), said he would pay the unusually high tax bill this year after the sale of millions of Tesla shares. Continue reading...

From a trans LA showdown to a pastoral Nintendo game, Guardian critics have the yuletide covered“I know what I’m going to do tomorrow, and the next day, and the next year, and the year after that.” The confident announcement of James Stewart early in It’s a Wonderful Life would not be shared by the characters of Tangerine, another festive treat that begins on a dicey Christmas Eve. For LA trans sex workers Sin-Dee and Alexandra, even the next 10 minutes are likely to be unpredictable. All they do know is that, having learned Sin-Dee’s boyfriend is cheating on her, a wrong must now be righted. That Sean Baker’s 2015 film was shot on iPhones is not the only break with Christmas movie tradition. But the meaning and message? As joyful as anything in cinema: no one is a failure who has friends. Danny Leigh Continue reading...

Social media companies’ algorithms enable the spread of extremism and social chaos. The case for regulating them is clearIn his 2021 Reith lectures, the third episode of which airs tonight, the artificial intelligence researcher Stuart Russell takes up the idea of a near-future AI that is so ruthlessly intelligent that it might pose an existential threat to humanity. A machine we create that might destroy us all.This has long been a popular topic with researchers and the press. But we believe an existential threat from AI is both unlikely and in any case far off, given the current state of the technology. However, the recent development of powerful, but far smaller-scale, AI systems has had a significant effect on the world already, and the use of existing AI poses serious economic and social challenges. These are not distant, but immediate, and must be addressed.Devdatt Dubhashi is professor of data science and AI at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. Shalom Lappin is professor of natural language processing at Queen Mary University of London, director of the Centre for Linguistic Theory and Studies in Probability at the University of Gothenburg, and emeritus professor of computational linguistics at King’s College London. Continue reading...

Critics of non-fungible tokens say they are symptomatic of unsustainable digital gold rushThe global market for non-fungible tokens hit $22bn (£16.5bn) this year as the craze for collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and Matrix avatars turned digital images into major investment assets.NFTs have drawn from veteran investors similar warnings to those issued about cryptocurrencies: that they are symptomatic of an unsustainable, digital gold rush. NFTs confer ownership of a unique digital item – whether a piece of virtual art by Damien Hirst or a jacket to be worn in the metaverse – upon someone, even if that item can be easily copied. Ownership is recorded on a digital, decentralised ledger known as a blockchain. Continue reading...

Whether socialising with friends or completing a difficult task, a ping on your phone can destroy the moment. It is time to address the constant stream of interruptionsJoanie (not her real name), a clinical psychologist who lives in London, has three work laptops. This is not uncommon when you’re spread across different NHS services. Sometimes, she feels like the 1980s synth supremo Paul Hardcastle, who used to dart between keyboards when performing on Top of the Pops. Except that he wasn’t always rudely interrupted by random notifications. “When I log on to one laptop,” she says, “this automatic thing comes on called Netpresenter player. It’s a ticker tape, like one of those bus-stop ads that keeps moving.”She quits it, because she needs to concentrate on writing up notes before her next meeting. But it keeps coming back with annoying notifications. “I’ve been in the middle of a session and it’s started playing music and a video – usually things like, ‘Don’t forget to wash your hands properly’, or, ‘Hey, we’re all meeting for a webinar in half an hour about staff wellbeing.’” Joanie says her wellbeing would improve if it was easier to get her work done. Continue reading...

Deepfakes are the latest moral danger from the fast-moving world of tech. But haven’t we seen it all before?On the night of Thursday 3 September 1998, a middle-aged community college professor with a history of heart attacks passed out at the wheel of his car on a busy US highway. The car drifted across the lanes and into the rush of oncoming traffic. The collision was so powerful it thrust the engine of the professor’s car into the front seats. Miraculously, he survived, and no one else was seriously injured. He recovered from a broken ankle and wrist and left hospital. A month later, he was back there with a pain in his leg – a clot that might or might not have been triggered by the accident. Next, his body swelled up to twice its size with fluid, so he looked like a balloon you could prick with a needle and burst. His wife and young children watched as his miraculous survival turned to a sudden worsening of his underlying heart disease. By April 1999 he was dead.Just over two decades later his son, Michael Grothaus, sat at his computer watching a video of his father, healthy and wearing a yellow T-shirt, playing with a smartphone that was invented many years after his death. He was enjoying himself, recording the sun-dappled park around him. Then he turned towards the screen and smiled benignly at his son from behind his unmistakeable bushy eyebrows. Continue reading...

Amazon Web Services cloud faces internet connectivity issues in two regions on the US West CoastAmazon’s cloud service, Amazon Web Services, briefly faced internet connectivity problems in two regions on the US West Coast on Wednesday, marking the second time in less than two weeks that the service was disturbed.AWS, which is a public cloud service provider, supports online infrastructures of many companies, including Netflix. Continue reading...

Out of Office, a book by Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen, explores the toxicity of productivity culture and why now is the best moment for changeEver wonder why, with every new piece of so-called productivity enhancing technology we adopt, we just end up with more, not less work? Slack was supposed to get rid of email – only now we find time to email and reply to our co-workers on Slack. Email was supposed to free us from reading through lengthy paper documents everyday, but we now email ourselves the pdfs home to read in the quiet hours after work. And smart phones? Don’t even get me started. A lot of us find ourselves replying to our bosses on the bus, while putting our kids to sleep, or even, God forbid, on the toilet.Out of Office, a new book by journalists Charlie Wartzel and Anne Helen Petersen, explores why productivity culture has been so successful at making us working more, not less. And with millions either quitting their jobs or having to work from home, they ask how we can capitalize on this moment for the good of workers, not our bosses. Continue reading...

From Forza Horizon 5’s pure driving thrills to the brain-scrambling fun of Pyschonauts 2 and Resident Evil Village’s massive vampires, here are the Xbox Series S/X must-havesIn order to appease a fanbase on the brink of disillusion, 343 Industries has abandoned some of the narrative extravagances from Halo 5 and built an unapologetically gung-ho sci-fi blaster with Master Chief doing what he does best: running about blasting aliens with cool guns. The open worlds and new grappling gun add variety and the standalone multiplayer is a frenetic competitor to the Battle Royale big fish, but this is classic Halo fare.

Publication cites Tesla boss’s influence ‘for good or ill’, but accolade is criticised over his views on tax, unions and CovidTime magazine’s decision to make Tesla billionaire Elon Musk its person of the year for 2021 has been criticised because of his attitude to tax, opposition to unions and playing down the dangers of Covid.Musk, who is also the founder and chief executive of space exploration company SpaceX, recently passed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the world’s wealthiest person as the rising price of Tesla shares pushed his net worth to around $300bn (£227bn). Continue reading...

State government employees advised to change passwords and monitor bank accounts after massive payroll data breachRecords including the name, tax file number and banking details of almost 80,000 South Australian government employees may have been stolen in a cyber-attack, with workers advised to assume their personal information has been stolen.The South Australian treasurer, Rob Lucas, first disclosed on Friday that records of 38,000 government employees had been stolen in a cyber-attack, but confirmed the extent of the data breach on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Nuclear Biscuit, a simulated experience, allows US officials to wargame a missile attack and see the devastating consequences of their choicesIt became clear that things had gone terribly awry on this particular day when I saw that the most moderate option on the desk in front of me involved killing at least five million people.I could kill up to 45 million if I chose the more comprehensive of the alternatives laid out on three pieces of paper, but it was hard to focus on the details because there were people shouting at me through my earpiece and from the screens in front of me. Continue reading...

Thea-Mai Baumann had used the account for more than a decade but it suddenly vanished, taking all her work with itAn Instagram user with the handle @metaverse last month found herself blocked from her account, which featured a decade of her life and work – after parent company Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta.On 28 October, Facebook, which owns Instagram, kept the social media platform Facebook so named but changed its umbrella corporate name to Meta – signaling an effort to reflect the virtual world that the tech giant considers the future of the internet. Continue reading...

Vacuum cleaner maker claims large parts of business are impossible to carry out from home

From the very first game on the console to a lonely space-rodent and a rejuvenated Spider-Man, these are our best picks for the PS5One of the most quietly significant games of the 00s has been transformed here into a visually incredible, endlessly rewarding dark fantasy. Make your way through imposing medieval castles, a horrendous prison tower and foul swamps using a sword, shield, wand and whatever else you can scavenge to defend yourself against what you find there. This game can be brutal and unforgiving – progress is hard-won, the combat is exciting and consequential, and the bosses are legendary – but you can always summon other players to help you, and if you can engage with its challenge, this is a game you’ll never forget. Continue reading...

Technology industry issues warning before MPs and peers publish report on online safety billIntroducing criminal sanctions for tech executives in the online safety bill could be copied by non-democratic regimes, the industry has claimed before an influential report this week.A joint committee of MPs and peers scrutinising the bill will publish its findings on Tuesday after the culture secretary promised to accelerate provisions for criminal liability for senior managers. Continue reading...

Analysts expect 71m VR and AR devices will be sold in 2025, and a new ecosystem of apps is comingTrying on clothes without stepping into a changing room, seeing your menu choices in 3D, viewing an art gallery’s contents outdoors and, of course, catching a Pokémon. This is the world of augmented reality, and one of its key players announced further additions last week.The owner of Snapchat, the app that offers those quirky animal-face selfies, will give developers the ability to transform any local landscape or building. A user could scan Big Ben so it can be turned into a wobbly landmark when seen through a phone, or even put the Matrix in their living room. Continue reading...

Implosion of online trading hubs highlights pitfalls of what one legal expert describes as ‘tulipmania’ investments

The Motherland actor on shouting at the television, the memoir she couldn’t put down, and the street food she can’t get enough ofBorn in Canada in 1972, the actor Tanya Moodie began her career in theatre. In 2020 she won a Royal Television Society breakthrough award for playing alpha mum Meg in the BBC Two sitcom Motherland. She has appeared in Sherlock and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and performed in numerous stage productions for the RSC, Royal Court and the National Theatre. Moodie has been a practising Buddhist since 1994, and lives in south London with her partner and daughter. Her latest theatre role is in Alice Childress’s 1955 play Trouble in Mind, directed by Nancy Medina, at the National Theatre, London, until 29 January 2022. The Motherland Christmas special is on BBC Two, Monday 20 December, 10.20pm. Continue reading...

The Liberian photographer on his image of a tender haircutIsaac West was searching for a moment of authenticity. He had known Sudanese models Juor and Odur for a few years; both live in the US, as does he. Their brief was to portray a moment of tenderness between a couple.“You’re caring for your girlfriend by cutting her hair,” was West’s direction for Juor, who had the razor switched on. The Liberian photographer adds: “He messed up her hair a bit – he’s a model, not a barber! Luckily, Odur had a real appointment in the diary, so she didn’t mind.” Continue reading...

In California’s Inland Empire, Black and Latino communities already faced some of the worst pollution. Then, more warehouses and trucks started appearingThree generations of Arah Parker’s family have lived in her pleasant, yellow-hued home, where there used to be a clear view of the San Gabriel mountains from the kitchen window.There used to be – until the country’s hunger for online shopping swallowed the neighborhood. Continue reading...

Log4Shell grants easy access to internal networks, making them susceptible to data loot and loss and malware attacksA critical vulnerability in a widely used software tool – one quickly exploited in the online game Minecraft – is rapidly emerging as a major threat to organizations around the world.“The internet’s on fire right now,” said Adam Meyers, senior vice-president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. “People are scrambling to patch”, he said, “and all kinds of people scrambling to exploit it.” He said on Friday morning that in the 12 hours since the bug’s existence was disclosed, it had been “fully weaponized”, meaning malefactors had developed and distributed tools to exploit it. Continue reading...

A US court case could have unmasked Australian as cryptocurrency inventor. But a jury found in his favour so the enigma remainsIn Budapest, there is a bust by the Danube River. The face is bronze, and blank, so people can see their own faces reflected back at them. It is wearing a hoodie, with the bitcoin logo on the chest.It is a statue of the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto. Nakamoto is the person or persons who developed bitcoin. They are anonymous and pseudonymous. Continue reading...

The blockaded strip is short on medicine and cement but has shelves of coveted PS5s, which elsewhere sell out in secondsIt is surrounded on all sides, regularly bombed, and plagued by shortages of vital medicines. Yet in the lead up to Christmas, the isolated Gaza Strip has – for once – ample supplies of something the rest of the world craves but can rarely find: a brand new PlayStation 5.Sony’s flagship video game console is hot property this holiday season, although most people who have asked for one will be sorely disappointed on Christmas morning. Continue reading...

Novel Bluetooth noise-cancellers deliver the bass and near-infinite battery life, but cannot be repairedThe latest wireless headphones from the Swedish company Urbanista hide an ingenious solution to battery life woes: solar charging.The Los Angeles cost £169 ($199/A$349) and look no different from a normal set of headphones, apart from a flexible Powerfoyle solar cell on top of the headband. Continue reading...

The actor’s slick series is packed with heroic true stories from Erin Brockovich to the Piper Alpha oil rig explosion. Plus: a movie-length new podcast starring Kate Mara and Adam ScottMichael Caine: Heroes

Loujain al-Hathloul says actions of men on behalf of the UAE led to her iPhone being hacked and to her imprisonment and tortureLoujain al-Hathloul, the prominent Saudi women’s rights activist, has filed a lawsuit against three former US intelligence and military officers who have admitted in a US court to helping carry out hacking operations on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.In her lawsuit, which was filed in a US district court in Oregon in conjunction with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Hathloul alleged that the actions of three men – Marc Baier, Ryan Adams, and Daniel Gericke – led to her iPhone being hacked and communication being exfiltrated by UAE security officials. Continue reading...

PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC; Heart Machine/ Annapurna Interactive

The Theranos founder’s fraud trial reminds us how obsessed Silicon Valley used to be with productivity. But has the pandemic changed things for the better?

I was hoping to earn my son’s respect by playing Sea of Thieves, but was hopelessly out of my depth

‘Total IT outage’ at convenience stores forced them to shut or accept cash payments onlyMore than 300 branches of the convenience store chain Spar in the north of England have been hit by a cyberattack, forcing many of them to close.The attack hit the company’s computer systems, causing a “total IT outage” that has prevented staff from taking card payments and locked them out of emails. Continue reading...

PC, Xbox Series, Xbox One; Microsoft; 343 Industries

We map out the rising number of high-tech surveillance and deterrent systems facing asylum seekers along EU bordersFrom military-grade drones to sensor systems and experimental technology, the EU and its members have spent hundreds of millions of euros over the past decade on technologies to track down and keep at bay the refugees on its borders.Poland’s border with Belarus is becoming the latest frontline for this technology, with the country approving last month a €350m (£300m) wall with advanced cameras and motion sensors. Continue reading...

Bitget reportedly loses licence after it promoted Army Coin, named after group’s ‘BTS army’ followersSingapore’s financial regulator has reportedly suspended Bitget, a crypto exchange that is mired in a row involving South Korea’s biggest boyband, BTS.Bitget has removed the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s logo from its website, the Guardian confirmed. The platform still claims to have licences from Australia, Canada and the United States, according to its website. Continue reading...

Jack Dorsey will no longer steer the company he founded, but is this due to stagnating profits or a more fundamental change of direction?So Jack Dorsey has stepped down as the CEO of Twitter. This means that the company has had four CEOs in its 15 years of existence, with Dorsey occupying the role twice, but in all that time it’s had only one business model, which may largely explain his departure.There are interesting parallels between Dorsey’s relationship with the company he co-founded and Steve Jobs’s with Apple, for both were ousted at one stage by their board colleagues and were then brought back to rescue said colleagues from their incompetence. Continue reading...

The inventor on the joy of Hockney, a fear of forgetfulness and how his father taught him to sink or swimBorn in Norfolk, Sir James Dyson, 74, studied at the Royal College of Art. He spent four years developing the cyclonic vacuum cleaner and went on to set up his company in 1992. Dyson products, now available in 82 countries, span household vacuums, purifier fans and heaters, lighting, hand dryers and haircare. This year he published his autobiography, Invention: a Life. He is married with three children and lives in Wiltshire.What is your earliest memory?

US official proposes ‘non-binding code of conduct’ at United Nations but campaigners disagreeThe US has rejected calls for a binding agreement regulating or banning the use of “killer robots”, instead proposing a “code of conduct” at the United Nations.Speaking at a meeting in Geneva focused on finding common ground on the use of such so-called lethal autonomous weapons, a US official balked at the idea of regulating their use through a “legally-binding instrument”. Continue reading...

Meta says misinformation spread by fictional scientist called Wilson Edwards focused on US blaming pandemic on China

The long-running franchise is back with a reasonably entertaining 90s-set story of the emergence of a zombie virusLike the zombie-making virus which is the true game engine of this long-running franchise, the world of Resident Evil keeps evolving, respawning and regenerating extra mutant limbs and organs in different media. First there was the influential shooting-centric computer game from Japan; that begat half a dozen blood-and-VFX feature films from married star-and-director team Milla Jovovich and Paul WS Anderson. Then followed television series, novels, comics, stage productions and even a Resident Evil-themed restaurant.Even if you haven’t played, watched, read or even eaten any Resident Evil product that shouldn’t significantly impair anyone’s ability to at least mildly enjoy and get up to speed with this latest iteration: a reboot story set in the late 1990s in the fictional town, the titular Raccoon City, where the zombie virus first emerges as a threat to humanity. Although gravely disappointed to report there are no raccoons whatsoever on hand, I can reveal that this is a reasonably entertaining, unpretentiously gory horror exercise, although clearly a bit distended with an excess of characters that need to be incorporated into the plot, many of whom feature in older RE lore. Continue reading...

The best esports competitors make millions, and the industry prides itself on meritocracy. So why are there so few women among the top earners?According to independent site esportsearnings.com, the highest-paid esports player has accumulated more than $7m (£5.2m) in winnings across his career. Johan “N0tail” Sundstein is a Danish Dota 2 player and has competed in more than 100 tournaments to amass his fortune.Below him in the rankings, the next 30 highest earners are all male Dota 2 players. But even where other games like Fortnite, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Call of Duty begin to appear, the list is still dominated by men. The first woman appears at #367: the Starcraft II champion Sasha “Scarlett” Hostyn. Hostyn has made about $400,000 (£300,000) in prize money during her career since 2011; a far cry from the millions of men above her. Continue reading...

Chief executive posts ‘Blow the whistle on Tesla!’ amid lawsuits brought against carmakerTesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, has appeared to joke about whistleblowers on Twitter in the wake of high-profile lawsuits against the electric carmaker brought by current and former staff.The billionaire urged his 65 million Twitter followers to “Blow the whistle on Tesla!” and included a link to a branded “Cyberwhistle” for sale in the company’s online shop. Continue reading...

Up for discussion in this week’s newsletter: an internal brawl over Dave Chappelle’s Netflix special is just the latest chapter in increasing activism in the industry

ERC-721’s topping of ArtReview’s Power 100 is first time a non-human entity has led listThe non-fungible token or NFT has taken the No 1 spot in the annual ranking of the contemporary art world’s most influential movers and shakers – marking the first time a non-human entity has topped the list.ERC-721, the specification for the “non-fungible token” on the Ethereum block-chain, tops the 20th Power 100 list published by ArtReview, after a year in which it upended the art market by bringing together contemporary art and millennial meme culture. Continue reading...

Nearly 3bn people, or 37% of global population, have never been online despite rise in use during pandemic

CMA said order would protect users and stop Meta ‘increasing its power in social media’Facebook parent company Meta has been ordered by the UK competition watchdog to sell the gif creation website Giphy, the first time the regulator has moved to block a deal struck by one of the Silicon Valley giants.The Competition and Markets Authority, which provisionally ruled in August that a sell-off was the only way to resolve competition concerns, said the move would “protect millions of social media users” and stop Facebook “increasing its significant power in social media”. Continue reading...

This gleefully incongruous piece of tie-in merch pays tribute to a quarter-century of Tomb Raider with recipes. So can we expect a spaghetti carbo-Lara?Tomb Raider recently celebrated its 25th anniversary, which means 25 years of articles about how Lara Croft transcended video games to become a global icon even your gran has heard of. As a female games critic, I am personally asked to explain her enduring popularity 25 times an hour, to the point where I have boiled my answer down to this: for many of us, she symbolises a moment in the history of gaming where we saw ourselves represented for the first time. Not as a princess trapped in a castle, but as an enigmatic, acrobatic embodiment of fierceness. Naturally, the adolescent boys of the 90s also regarded her with the same distanced respect, right?Anyway, here’s what nobody says they remember fondly about Tomb Raider: the food. Lara doesn’t have a signature snack, like Mario with his mushrooms or Pac-Man with his Mini Babybels. She’s never seen taking a break from shooting dinosaurs to chow down on a Kendal mint cake and some lemon-barley water. The early games allow you to explore her ancestral home, which has a walk-in freezer, but all it contains are giant legs of ham. Continue reading...

I received a flood of renewal demands and unsubscribing doesn’t workI cancelled my McAfee anti-virus subscription earlier this year when I discovered it had been double charging me. It refunded only the current year and led me on a wild goose chase to recover the previous two years’ money; I eventually gave up.Now that my subscription period has ended, it is bombarding me with renewal demand emails several times a day. This weekend I received 15. Continue reading...

Bessemer workers will hold a second vote based on objections to the first one, but labor experts say victory is a long shotA new union election for Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, will be held based on objections to the first vote that took place in April.The move is a major blow to Amazon, which had spent about a year aggressively campaigning for warehouse workers in Bessemer to reject the union, which they ultimately did by a wide margin. Continue reading...

Clearview AI may have gathered data without people’s knowledge, says Information Commissioner’s OfficeA US company that gathered photos of people from Facebook and other social media sites for use in facial recognition by its clients is facing a £17m fine after the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found it had committed “serious breaches” of data protection law.Clearview AI, which describes itself as the “world’s largest facial network”, allows its customers to compare facial data against a database of more than 10bn images harvested from the internet. Continue reading...

Cabinet Office announces new standard for tools that influence exam results, housing benefit allocations and pothole repairsMinisters and public bodies must reveal the architecture behind algorithms that influence exam results, housing benefit allocations and pothole repairs, under new transparency standards.The UK government has published a transparency standard for algorithms, the series of instructions that a computer follows to complete a task or produce a single outcome. Algorithms have become the focus of increasing controversy, whether through their role in deciding A-level results last year or making decisions about benefit claims. Continue reading...