Technology | The Guardian

The film side of TikTok has plenty of spoofs. But our writer prefers the critics, the metal-jawed burger-biting machine – and the effects experts revealing how to make a camera crew vanish into thin airFilm TikTok is giving film an explosion of energy, a performative and democratised version of cinephilia that celebrates, imitates, teases, lip-syncs, mashes up and mocks – but all the time rubs up against – the movies. Susan Sontag, in Against Interpretation, called for a rich, intuitive kind of criticism that celebrates and reproduces the sensuous effect of art, instead of imposing a coldly pedagogic analysis. I think she’d have loved Film TikTok. And it’s happened over just a few years, propelled by people under the age of 25.Apart from everything else, Film TikTok may be undermining one of the most fundamental tenets of cinema: that the screen has to be “landscape” style, since anything else looks amateurish and inauthentic. British film-maker Charlie Shackleton recently talked about mentoring a group of young Australian critics and finding how utterly steeped they were in the language of TikTok: asked to take a picture of them on his phone, he recalls his chagrin for turning it sideways – “Like a fucking Lumiere brother!”

Small updates keep Apple at top of smartwatch market, even if it’s not worth upgrading from recent modelsThe Apple Watch gets a bigger, better screen, faster charging and a small price cut for 2021, which is enough to keep it at the top of the smartwatch market.The Series 7 version costs from £369 ($399/A$599) and, despite being £10 cheaper than last year’s Series 6, is Apple’s most expensive smartwatch, above the Watch SE costing from £249 ($279/A$429). It requires an iPhone 6S or newer and does not work with Android. Continue reading...

Kingshuk Das testifies that former CEO was resistant to critiques of company’s devicesThe former lab director of Theranos has testified that Elizabeth Holmes gave “implausible” excuses for apparent failures in the company’s tests and personally pushed back against his concerns about its signature blood testing machines.Kingshuk Das testified on Tuesday in the high-profile case as the government heads into its 10th week of arguments against the former CEO, who faces accusations that Theranos knowingly defrauded clients and investors about its capabilities. Continue reading...

Businessman allegedly used surveillance tool to spy on journalist, raising questions about authorities’ links to Israeli companyMexico’s use of spyware made by NSO Group is facing new scrutiny following the arrest of a businessman on allegations that he used the surveillance tool to spy on a journalist.The arrest of the businessman – who has not formally been named by Mexican prosecutors – comes months after a consortium of media outlets, including the Guardian, published a series of reports detailing how the phone numbers of thousands of Mexicans, including 50 people linked to the country’s current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, appeared on a leaked list of numbers selected by government clients of the Israeli spyware company for possible surveillance. Continue reading...

From tap stars duetting with Gene Kelly to Gordon Ramsay twisting with his daughter, TikTok is where performers – large, small, amateur, pro – drop the facade and dance till their toes are rawTikTok is made for dance. The most popular TikToker – Charli D’Amelio, 17, with 9.9bn likes – is a dancer, or started out as one. And it is the platform that’s launched or spread a thousand dance trends, from the #toosieslide to the #TheGitUpChallenge, via the Floss, the Dougie and the Milly Rock.Unlike the slick pros of Instagram, or the archive performances on YouTube, TikTok is just about the pure joy of dancing, whoever you are. Size, shape, experience and natural grace are immaterial. It’s essentially the school playground writ very large, the silly routines and memes that used to get passed around, with everyone miming the lyrics to whatever was on Top of the Pops last night. Continue reading...

Other cryptocurrencies such as ethereum also reach records as investors hedge against inflationThe bitcoin price has reached a new record high, breaking through $68,000 (£50,000), and analysts predict that the world’s best-known cryptocurrency will rise further in the coming weeks.This beats the previous record high set in late October, when bitcoin reached nearly $67,700 before falling back again when investors discovered a new cryptocurrency, shiba inu. Other cryptocurrencies have also risen to record highs, such as ethereum, which soared to $4,837. Continue reading...

Some firms reinvent themselves in the battery era, but others struggle as work moves abroadCorners of the Alucast factory in the Black Country would be familiar to metalworkers several centuries ago. Workers pour molten aluminium at 720C into steel moulds. The cooling metal is then quickly pressed into shape before being sanded down into parts for gas-guzzling British sports cars.Yet for all its traditional West Midlands manufacturing roots, Alucast is finding a role for itself in a fast-growing new industry: electric cars. Continue reading...

A 16-year-old girl was rescued in Kentucky after using a hand gesture described on the social media app TikTok to signal to motorists that she was in trouble. The signal – turning the palm outwards and closing the fingers around a tucked thumb – has been demonstrated by users on TikTok and by non-profit organisations like the Canadian Women's Foundation as a way for a person being abused to tell someone they are in trouble without alerting the abuser. 'That hand gesture was everything,' Gilbert Acciardo from the Laurel county sheriff's office said. 'Had that not been been transmitted by the young lady, had there not been someone out there that knew how to interpret what she was doing, then who knows? We might not have had a good resolution on this'

Steve Wozniak, Steve and Patricia Jobs and Daniel Kottke built 200 Apple-1 units in Jobs’ home 45 years agoOne of the few remaining Apple-1 computers, the company’s first product, will go on sale this week at an auction that is expected to fetch as much as $600,000.The 45-year-old computer is one of just 200 that Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs tested and designed along with Patty Jobs and Daniel Kottke in the Jobs’ Los Altos home. It is considered a “holy grail” for vintage tech collectors. Continue reading...

Investigation finds rights activists working for groups accused by Israel of being terrorist were previously targeted by NSO spywareThe mobile phones of six Palestinian human rights defenders, some of whom work for organisations that were recently – and controversially – accused by Israel of being terrorist groups, were previously hacked by sophisticated spyware made by NSO Group, according to a report.An investigation by Front Line Defenders (FLD), a Dublin-based human rights group, found that the mobile phones of Salah Hammouri, a Palestinian rights defender and lawyer whose Jerusalem residency status has been revoked, and five others were hacked using Pegasus, NSO’s signature spyware. In one case, the hacking was found to have occurred as far back as July 2020. Continue reading...

Huge stars like Justin Bieber have made singles designed to go viral on TikTok. Yet the platform’s pop scene is far weirder – from internet drama turned into 40-second tunes, to singers famous for making ‘adorable faces’The means by which music is played invariably affects music itself: jazz changed with the introduction of the LP, which allowed longer pieces to be released; the arrival of the CD gave the world the blockbuster 70-minute hip-hop album padded out with skits; a couple of years ago, a famous pop producer told me that the algorithms of Spotify now affect everything from a single’s length to the sound of its intro and choruses.So it is with TikTok, seemingly the primary means by which tweens and teenagers discover music in 2021. There have been pop singles audibly designed to become memes on the video-sharing platform, Drake’s Toosie Slide and Justin Bieber’s Yummy among them. More intriguing is the way it has democratised music, taking it away from the machinations of record companies and placing its promotion into the hands of ordinary people, with often unpredictable results. Continue reading...

The pandemic has driven a great leap forward in digital learning. Is there any point in looking back?My 21-year-old goddaughter, a second-year undergraduate, mentioned in passing that she watches video lectures offline at twice the normal speed. Struck by this, I asked some other students I know. Many now routinely accelerate their lectures when learning offline – often by 1.5 times, sometimes by more. Speed learning is not for everyone, but there are whole Reddit threads where students discuss how odd it will be to return to the lecture theatre. One contributor wrote: “Normal speed now sounds like drunk speed.”Education was adapting to the digital world long before Covid but, as with so many other human activities, the pandemic has given learning a huge shove towards the virtual. Overnight, schools and universities closed and teachers and students had to find ways to do what they do exclusively via the internet. Naturally there were problems, but as Professor Diana Laurillard of University College London’s Knowledge Lab explains, they essentially pulled off an extraordinary – and global – experiment. “It can’t return to the way it was,” she says. “The cat is out of the bag.” Continue reading...

The writer’s follow-up to The Circle is longer and baggier, but still fuelled by rage at the power of Silicon Valley and its numbing effect on the human raceKudos to Dave Eggers. In this follow-up to the admirable, big-tech, dystopian thriller The Circle (which you needn’t have read to enjoy the current book), he again squares up to the new enemies of everything untamed and brilliant in humankind. If you meant to read Shoshana Zuboff’s important and demanding The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, but were too worn down by surveillance capitalism’s intrusions to get round to it, The Every tackles the same concerns from a shared perspective of humanist outrage, in the form of a gulpable fictive entertainment.The Circle’s titular startup turned metaphysical empire (think: Googlebook) has merged with an unmistakable e-commerce site referred to, doubtless for legal reasons, only by its nickname: “the jungle”. Messianically rebranded as The Every, the corporation is now run by Mae Holland, The Circle’s fast-rising, newbie protagonist. Under Holland, The Every pursues its heedless agenda of a worldwide, soft totalitarian order of mass behavioural compliance through surveillance. However, in part due to a corporate culture of timid self-scrutiny, there is a dearth of new ideas on campus. Enter another newbie, Delaney Wells, radicalised by her years studying under anti-monopoly crusader Professor Agarwal (surely based on the aforementioned Zuboff, Agarwal articulates the novel’s moral and intellectual conscience in letters to her former protege). Bent on bringing down The Every from the inside, Delaney conspires with her housemate Wes, a big-tech resisting “trog”, to sabotage the company. The pair settle on a strategy of terroristic accelerationism: if they can introduce enough vile or moronic apps into The Every’s portfolio, it might trigger a popular insurrection that will bring about the company’s downfall. Continue reading...

There’s Shakespeare the Roadman, life lessons from Grey’s Anatomy, and everything Gemma Collins has ever said or done. In the first of a series in which Guardian critics unearth the best of TikTok, our writer takes on its TV-related contentTikTok and telly go together like Ant and Dec before the drink-driving ban. Most obviously, TikTok is good for reliving highlights from daytime and reality shows past. Remember that iconic “Dear-lord-what-a-sad-little-life-Jane” moment from Come Dine With Me? Or that time an indignant Curtis from Love Island chose coffee-making over morning cuddles? Or everything Gemma Collins has ever said and done? All these have been faithfully chopped, churned, lip-synced and lauded by accounts such as Greatbritishmemes, Qualitybritishtelly and Loveofhuns. It makes the enforced ad breaks on All 4 and ITV Hub just whiz by.That’s only the beginning of this sweet symbiosis however, because TikTok also provides a glimpse into TV’s future. The outrageously talented Munya Chawawa has finally reached Channel 4, as co-host of Complaints Welcome, but his viral music parodies have long-threatened to spill out of the small(er) screen and into the mainstream. And since TikTok allows quality content to bypass the traditional gatekeepers and connect directly with an audience, there’s plenty more where he came from. The likes of Bigmiko (if Shakespeare was a roadman …), Abi Clarke (relatable queen of banal office chat) and Harry Trevaldwyn (he’s already been cast in the UK remake of Call My Agent) are shaping up to be the panel show regulars of tomorrow. Continue reading...

Companies accused of using social media influencers to entice young people to try nicotine productsPosing expertly for Instagram snaps, a parade of young and beautiful DJs, models and socialites line up to endorse Velo, a brand of flavoured nicotine pouches made by British American Tobacco (BAT).Between them, the 26 social media influencers boast 2.2m followers, and an audience that skews young, meaning they are hard to reach through traditional advertising channels. Continue reading...

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 taken an Instagram-worthy picture, 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...

Tech companies are seeking to analyse data on the way we tap, scroll, text and call to monitor our mental health – with potential consequences for privacy and healthcareWe all fear our smartphones spy on us, and I’m subject to a new type of surveillance. An app called TapCounter records each time I touch my phone’s screen. My swipes and jabs are averaging about 1,000 a day, though I notice that’s falling as I steer shy of social media to meet my deadline. The European company behind it, QuantActions, promises that through capturing and analysing the data it will be able to “detect important indicators related to mental/neurological health”.Arko Ghosh is the company’s cofounder and a neuroscientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands. “Tappigraphy patterns” – the time series of my touches – can, he says, confidently be used not only to infer slumber habits (tapping in the wee hours means you are not sleeping) but also mental performance level (the small intervals in a series of key-presses represent a proxy for reaction time), and he has published work to support it. Continue reading...

The promise of neurotechnology to make lives better is growing. But do we need a new set of rights to protect the integrity of our minds?“The skull acts as a bastion of privacy; the brain is the last private part of ourselves,” Australian neurosurgeon Tom Oxley says from New York.Oxley is the CEO of Synchron, a neurotechnology company born in Melbourne that has successfully trialled hi-tech brain implants that allow people to send emails and texts purely by thought. Continue reading...

Facebook’s woes cast a long shadow at a European tech summit this week, and it will take more than rebranding to mend themIt has been a bruising time for Facebook. The company is still absurdly profitable – Meta, its renamed parent company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, generated $86bn (£63bn) in revenues last year, while Facebook’s own revenues grew by 56% in the second quarter. But away from the lucre, there is diminishing lustre. It stands condemned by critics and a widely feted whistleblower. And now it finds its standing diminishing among its peers.

Does your machine need an upgrade to get the most out of 2021’s games? Here’s what to considerWith the autumn video game release schedule now in full swing, the thoughts of many PC owners are turning to hardware upgrades. Blockbusters such as Halo Infinite, Battlefield 1942 and Forza Horizon 5 will all support demanding visual effects such as ray tracing, so it seems like the perfect time to invest in new kit.There’s just one problem: this is probably the worst, most expensive time in recent memory to boost your processing power. Manufacturing and distribution problems, together with skyrocketing demand, have seen prices soar, especially for high-end graphics cards. “There are GTX 1080Ti cards listed on eBay for over £500 – that’s a four-year-old GPU for half a grand,” says Chris Wilson, design director at Cardboard Sword. “The suggestion for most people would probably be to wait it out. Intel is rumoured to have a serious GPU out early next year and they are likely to price it aggressively to try and gain some market share. Eventually the bottom has to fall out of this current disaster.” Continue reading...

Company’s public policy director says crackdown would stifle speech for vulnerable people who need to remain unidentified

Company says cost of adding homes to new network has dropped 15%, and ‘we can fund it ourselves’BT has scrapped plans to find a joint venture partner to help fund the rollout of its next-generation broadband network to an extra 5 million homes, before a potential takeover move by the billionaire investor Patrick Drahi next month.The company said it had abandoned plans to find a partner for its subsidiary Openreach because the cost of rolling out the new network had dropped significantly, and takeup by homes and business had proved better than expected. Continue reading...

This wildly hagiographic documentary about the billionaires fiddling with their massive rockets will have you cringing all the way into suborbital spaceFor a documentary created with the Washington Post, a newspaper owned by a company controlled by Jeff Bezos, the new Discovery+ special Space Titans has an impressive amount of Elon Musk in it. Maybe the algorithm doesn’t dictate everything quite yet. Or maybe it’s an oversight that is even now causing heads to roll in the corridors of Nash Holdings LLC before they are boxed up and sent by Prime to the homes of their former loved ones. We will never know, I suppose, unless Bezos chooses to tell us.Space Titans tells the story of the three billionaires – Bezos, Musk and, uh, Richard Branson – competing to see who has the biggest penis (I’m sorry: competing to see who can be the first to make space travel for ordinary citizens and colonisation of other planets a reality). We are told – repeatedly – that we are at an inflection point in space exploration. Billionaires are going to boldly go where no one has gone before. Because they have all the money now. Continue reading...

Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook, also calls misuse of user data as unethical as child labourA former adviser to Mark Zuckerberg has said democracy “may never recover” if Facebook does not change and has called for misuse of users’ data to be labelled as unethical as child labour.Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook who has become a staunch critic of the business, said revelations from whistleblower Frances Haugen have created an opportunity for change at Zuckerberg’s social media empire. Continue reading...

Up for discussion in the Guardian tech newsletter: The Jack Ma saga sheds light on wealth, politics and fame in today’s China

Firm must speed up drivers’ take-up of zero-emissions vehicles to meet green targets, says thinktankElectric cars are used for fewer than one in every 20 miles driven by Uber drivers in major European cities, according to data that suggest the taxi app company must drastically accelerate its drivers’ take-up of zero-emissions vehicles to meet its environmental targets.Uber pledged last year that 50% of miles driven in seven European capitals by the end of 2025 will be in battery electric cars. The vehicles produce zero exhaust emissions, helping to address the impacts on health and the climate caused by urban transport. Continue reading...

Firm says decision is in response to growing concerns over software that identifies users in photos and videosFacebook will delete the “faceprints” of more than a billion people after announcing that it is shutting down its facial recognition system due to the “many concerns” about using the technology.The social media network has been under political, legal and regulatory pressure over its use of the software, which automatically identifies users in photos and videos – and let’s them know if a fellow user has posted a photo or video with them in it – if they have opted in to the feature. In a statement, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, said it would shut down facial recognition on the platform over the coming weeks and delete 1 billion facial recognition templates. Continue reading...

Internet firm cites ‘increasingly challenging business and legal environment’ as reason for exitYahoo has announced its withdrawal from the Chinese market in the latest retreat by foreign technology firms responding to Beijing’s tightening control over the industry.“In recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China, Yahoo’s suite of services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1,” the company said on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Communication error may cause a false forward-collision warning or unexpected activation of the emergency brakesTesla Inc is recalling nearly 12,000 US vehicles sold since 2017 because a communication error may cause a false forward-collision warning or unexpected activation of the emergency brakes, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on Tuesday.The California automaker said the recall of 11,704 Model S, X, 3 and Y vehicles was prompted after a software update on 23 October to vehicles in its limited early access version 10.3 Full-Self Driving (FSD) (Beta) population. Continue reading...

Menier Chocolate Factory, London

Amazon's founder has told delegates at Cop26 that his trip to space made him realise how ‘finite and fragile’ the Earth is. Jeff Bezos said: 'I was told that seeing the Earth from space changes the lens from which you view the world. But I was not prepared for just how much that would be true.' It comes after Prince William, in the weeks leading up to the climate crisis summit, had criticised billionaires embroiled in a space tourism race, saying the world’s greatest minds needed to focus on fixing the Earth instead

Ten US-based and Russian state media outlets responsible for 69% of content on Facebook, finds Center for Countering Digital HateMisinformation about the climate crisis runs rampant on Facebook, a new study has found, and comes mostly from a handful of “super polluter” publishers.Ten publishers are responsible for 69% of digital climate change denial content on Facebook, a new study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has found. The outlets, which the report labels the “toxic ten”, include several conservative websites in the US, as well as Russian state media.Breitbart, a far-right news site once run by former Trump strategist Steve BannonWestern Journal, a Conservative news siteNewsmax, which has previously been sued for promoting election fraud conspiraciesTownhall Media, founded by the Exxon-funded Heritage FoundationMedia Research Center, a “thinktank” that received funding from ExxonWashington Times, founded by self-proclaimed messiah Sun Myung MoonThe Federalist Papers, a site that has promoted Covid misinformationDaily Wire, a conservative news site that is of the most engaged-with publishers on FacebookRussian state media, pushing disinformation via RT.com and Sputnik NewsPatriot Post, a conservative site whose writers use pseudonyms Continue reading...

Top camera, Android 12 and Tensor chip but competitive pricing makes for a bargainThe Pixel 6 is Google’s affordable flagship phone for 2021 and proves to be a leader in the field with a top-class camera and a new advanced chip at its heart – while undercutting most of the competition on price.The phone costs £599 ($599/A$999), which is £250 less than the Pixel 6 Pro, while still offering 90% of what you get with Google’s top model.Screen: 6.4in 90Hz FHD+ OLED (411ppi)Processor: Google TensorRAM: 8GB of RAMStorage: 128 or 256GBOperating system: Android 12Camera: 50MP + 12MP ultrawide, 8MP selfieConnectivity: 5G, eSIM, wifi 6E, NFC, Bluetooth 5.2 and GNSSWater resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 minutes)Dimensions: 158.6 x 74.8 x 8.9mmWeight: 207g Continue reading...

Some BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen-group vehicles will be able plug into Tesla charging stations in NetherlandsTesla is opening its charging network to other electric cars for the first time with a pilot programme in the Netherlands, as the world’s most valuable carmaker looks to bring electric vehicles into the mainstream.The programme will be tested at 10 locations in the Netherlands, the company said on Monday, adding that Dutch non-Tesla electric vehicle drivers can access the Tesla stations, or Superchargers, through the Tesla app. Continue reading...

Whistleblower says a new CEO should prioritise online safety over Meta restructureFacebook whistleblower Frances Haugen has delivered her strongest call yet for Mark Zuckerberg to step down as chief executive of his social media empire, saying the business will be better off with a leader who focuses on user safety.Frances Haugen said Facebook’s parent company, rebranded Meta last week, is unlikely to change if its founder remains in charge. Speaking at the Web Summit in Lisbon, the former Facebook employee, who has leaked tens of thousands of internal documents detailing the company’s struggles with user safety and misinformation, also criticised Zuckerberg’s “unconscionable” decision to invest in its metaverse concept instead of focusing on fixing its current problems. Continue reading...

Squid token’s website and social accounts disappear after price jumped more than 310,000% in value and then crashedThe value of a cryptocurrency inspired by the popular Netflix series Squid Game collapsed on Monday less than two weeks after investors could start buying tokens.After jumping more than 310,000% in value as of Sunday night, Squid lost all its value after Twitter flagged the cryptocurrency’s account and temporarily restricted it due to “suspicious activity”. Continue reading...

We document everything obsessively. And implicit in this compulsion is the suspicion that our lives are best understood at a distance – but what do we lose?This summer I bought two in-home security cameras. I told people I got them because my cat was sick, and I required on-demand proof he was still alive. But the truth is, I just wanted to spy on him. There’s something about a cat sitting by itself on a couch, staring into the middle distance in an empty room, that is inherently funny. What are they thinking? When they slink off camera, where are they going?The problem with getting a camera for your pets is that you also inadvertently get a camera for yourself. Years ago, when my ex and I got one for our cat, he once caught me eating Pringles on the couch and sent me a text: “Once you pop.” The camera, in those moments, was a comical imposition, fulfilling its duty of surveillance in precisely the ways we didn’t want. Continue reading...

A startup called Reef wants to un-clog city streets and deliver food to your door via robotA robot the size of a small cooler sits on the sun-soaked fake grass in a segment of parking lot close to Brickell, Miami – the city’s shiny-towered financial district overlooking ​​Biscayne Bay.Nicknamed “Reefy”, the electric-powered autonomous delivery robot wheels smoothly in front of a series of trailers set up to cook food for companies with names that sound as if they were created by algorithm to cater to stoners (MrBeast Burger and Man vs Fries) and another that serves as a storage unit for an online convenience store called Goodees – slogan: “Late Night Cravings Don’t Need Validation.” Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg has revealed a glimpse of Facebook’s plans to built the “metaverse” - a digital world built over our own, comprising virtual reality headsets and augmented reality. The product launch came as the social media giant announced it will change the name of its holding company to Meta, in a rebrand that comes as the company faces a series of public relations crises

The rebrand comes as the company faces a series of public relations crisesThe announcement by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the social media giant will change the name of its holding company to Meta in a virtual-reality rebrand has prompted dismay and bemusement.On Thursday, Zuckerberg said Meta would encompass Facebook as well as apps such as Instagram, WhatsApp and the virtual reality brand Oculus. Continue reading...

Holding company will encompass Facebook as well as its apps, such as Instagram and WhatsApp, and the virtual reality brand OculusFacebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the social media giant will change the name of its holding company to Meta, in a rebrand that comes as the company faces a series of public relations crises.Zuckerberg revealed the new name at Facebook’s annual AR/VR conference on Thursday, where he outlined the company’s virtual-reality vision for the future. Continue reading...

The company, now rebranded Meta, already has a foothold in the digital world. How far will it go to see it succeed?Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Thursday outlined his vision for the future of the social media giant, formalising the company’s focus on the metaverse.In a presentation at the company’s annual Connect conference, Zuckerberg announced the company is rebranding as Meta and detailed how his company aims to build a new version of the internet. Continue reading...

‘Correct masculine response’ to newborn is for men to work harder, says venture capitalistA multimillionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist has refused to apologise for calling men in “important positions” who take six months paternity leave “losers”.Joe Lonsdale, a founder of software giant Palantir Technologies, made the comment on Twitter in response to Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary, taking time off to care for his newborn twins. Continue reading...

Scam known as ‘brushing’ is deployed to increase ranking in Amazon search systemMore than 1m British households may have been targeted by a scam in which sellers on Amazon Marketplace send unsolicited packages to addresses in order to artificially increase their sales numbers, according to research.The technique, known as “brushing”, involves sending items that are usually cheap to ship to unsuspecting people and logging them as genuine sales to increase a seller’s sales statistics. The aim is to appear as highly ranked as possible in Amazon’s search system, which prioritises those with high volumes and good reviews. Continue reading...

Brilliant camera and experience puts Pixel on par with Samsung and Apple, while undercutting on priceThe Pixel 6 Pro is Google’s reinvigorated attempt to beat Apple and Samsung’s best smartphones, with powerful new cameras, custom chips and a standout design.The new model is Google’s top phone for 2021 and costs £849 ($899/A$1,299), sitting above the standard Pixel 6 costing £599.Screen: 6.7in 120Hz QHD+ OLED (512ppi)Processor: Google TensorRAM: 12GB of RAMStorage: 128 or 256GBOperating system: Android 12Camera: 50MP + 12MP ultrawide + 48MP 4x telephoto, 11.1MP selfieConnectivity: 5G, eSIM, wifi 6E, UWB, NFC, Bluetooth 5.2 and GNSSWater resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 minutes)Dimensions: 163.9 x 75.9 x 8.9mmWeight: 210g Continue reading...

Several agencies are investigating the company’s workings post former employee Frances Haugen’s extensive document leakOn Tuesday, Facebook told its employees to preserve internal documents and communications for legal reasons, as governments and regulators have opened inquiries into its operations amid an onslaught of revelations from whistleblower documents.A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to Reuters that the company sent a legal hold notice to all personnel for documents. “Document preservation requests are part of the process of responding to legal inquiries,” the spokesperson added. Continue reading...

Banning anonymous social media accounts could backfire, says Keith Flett. Plus letters from John Freeman and Paul KomierowskiOwen Jones (Banning anonymous social media accounts would only stifle free speech and democracy, 25 October) is right that the online safety bill requires serious consideration. There are real abuses that need to be tackled, but that must not mean a wider trawl to censor opinion critical of authority and the government.We have been here before, when letters were the means used to deliver threats in the early 19th century. EP Thompson reviewed some of the letters in his essay The Crime of Anonymity and discovered a wide range of issues, from personal threats to industrial grievances. In many cases, the authors were brought to trial and sentenced to transportation or death. Continue reading...

Analysis identifies 83 accounts behind 70% of tweets abusing Duchess and Duke of SussexThe Duchess of Sussex, who has said she avoids social media for “my own self-preservation”, has been the subject of a coordinated hate and misinformation campaign on Twitter, according to a new report.Both she and Prince Harry, who are advocates for healthier social media, have been targeted on the platform, with Meghan receiving about 80% of the abuse, according to the Twitter analytics provider Bot Sentinel. Continue reading...