Technology | The Guardian

Peter B Scott-Morgan told me how harnessing technology will help him – and other people with extreme disabilities – live an enhanced lifeIn November 2017, Peter B Scott-Morgan received the news that almost nothing can prepare you for – he was told he had just two years to live. Peter had been diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND). It kills a third of those who have it within a year, rising to a half by the end of year two, with no known cure. Devastated as Peter was, he’d already decided this was negotiable. Fortunately, long before his own diagnosis, he had been fascinated by the idea of harnessing the power of modern technology to prolong human life.Already a year had passed since his first symptoms had started appearing. After stepping out of the bath while on a trip to the Arctic Circle, he’d noticed that shaking the water from his feet as he emerged was suddenly and inexplicably out of his grasp. This was the earliest stage of the near-total paralysis that the condition would soon inflict on him. As the disease develops, messages sent from his brain and spinal cord would eventually stop reaching his muscles entirely – his body was failing him one piece at a time. Continue reading...

Games firm launches perfectly stage-managed attack just as tech giants’ detente is fracturingIn Fortnite, the astronomically successful video game from Epic Games, 100 players skydive on to an island and enter into one-on-one combat until only the winner is left standing.The formula has bestowed the game with once-in-a-generation success: it has more players than Twitter has users, it has minted its own millionaire celebrities, and it has turned Epic, formerly an also-ran provider of development tools, into one of the most successful companies in gaming. Continue reading...

Social network attempting to combat election-related misinformation on its platform with new voter information hubBeginning Thursday, US Facebook users who post about voting may start seeing an addendum to their messages – labels directing readers to authoritative information about the upcoming presidential election.It’s the social network’s latest step to combat election-related misinformation on its platform as the presidential election nears, one in which many voters may be submitting ballots by mail for the first time. Facebook began adding similar links to posts about in-person and mail-in balloting by federal politicians, including Donald Trump, in July. Continue reading...

Tech will tell users who spend 15 minutes within 2 metres of another app user who has tested positive to self-isolate

More retail investors are expected to jump in now shares suddenly look relatively affordableElon Musk got nearly $4bn richer on Wednesday morning, probably before he even got out of bed. Why? Because on Tuesday evening Tesla (one-fifth owned by Musk) announced a “stock split” that in pre-market speculation early on Wednesday drove up the already stratospheric valuation of the company by another 7%.Yet a stock-split is merely a housekeeping arrangement. It’s when a company divides the existing shares of its stock into multiple new shares, usually because the share price has reached such high levels that even buying one share looks too pricey for small investors. Continue reading...

Fewer pieces of suicide, child nudity and exploitation content were removed after staff were sent home

Trump has threatened to ban the app amid privacy concerns. But young people say they’re used to being trackedMauren Sparrow downloaded TikTok in March to pass the time during lockdown. Since then she’s posted tutorials on crafting and videos of her two cats, Calcifer and Jiji, some of which have accrued millions of views and likes.

Superphones unveiled with new Z Fold 2, Tab S7 tablet, Buds Live earbuds and Watch 3Samsung has launched its latest attempt to woo premium smartphone buyers with its Galaxy Note20 series of stylus-equipped phablets with Xbox gaming.The South Korean manufacturer will hope that the revamped Note, which aims to be more than just a phone with “PC power” aided by its partnership with Microsoft, will propel it out of a Covid-19-related dip in which it was beaten into second place by Huawei for the first time. Continue reading...

The legislation comes as a federal panel is investigating the market power of Facebook, Amazon, Apple and GoogleNew York state is introducing a bill that would make it easier to sue big tech companies for alleged abuses of their monopoly powers.New York is America’s financial center and one of its most important tech hubs. If successfully passed, the law could serve as a model for future legislation across the country. It also comes as a federal committee is conducting an anti-trust investigation into tech giants amid concerns that their unmatched market power is suppressing competition. Continue reading...

Acoustic remix of Miel Pops Russian cereal jingle becomes a strange anthem for a stranger timeThere are only two types of people in this world. Those who are obsessed with a CGI llama dancing to an acoustic remix of a 2010 Russian cereal commercial jingle, and those over the age of 23. Continue reading...

Opposition MPs and former civilian servants demand to know exactly how UK-US trade dossier appeared onlineLiam Fox is facing questions from opposition politicians, former civil servants and campaigners about how Russian hackers were apparently able to obtain government documents marked “official sensitive [UK eyes only]” from his personal email last year.The former minister’s account is believed to have been accessed repeatedly between July and October, and 451 pages of emails and policy documents were subsequently posted on Reddit, prompting questions as to whether the dossier had come directly from Fox’s personal email. Continue reading...

Users will be able to check truthfulness of messages that have come via five or more peopleWhatsApp has introduced a feature allowing users to check the contents of viral messages in the latest move to root out disinformation and fake news being spread on the Facebook-owned service.The feature, which is being piloted in six countries including the UK from Tuesday, allows users to perform a Google search on content they have been forwarded to factcheck claims and information. Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch; Nintendo

It was all there on Saturday and gone by Monday without any warningIn late April my @virgin.net email account, which has been my main one for 20-plus years, disappeared. I used it on a Saturday but on Monday I could no longer log in and have been unable to do so ever since. Imagine all the links and contacts I have lost.Despite spending, in total, a whole day on the phone to Virgin Media, and talking to a large number of people, no one has been able to resolve the matter. Can it really be that in 2020, an email account can just be “disappeared” by a provider without warning? Continue reading...

Cut-price Google phone has great camera, screen, performance and battery life, in small and light bodyThe Pixel 4a is a return to form for Google’s smartphone efforts: a lower-cost, mid-range phone that is high quality, long-lasting and fairly small, with a great camera.The £349 Pixel 4a is very much an attempt to boil down a smartphone to only the essentials and then make them all work really well. Continue reading...

Donald Trump says the Treasury should receive a share of proceeds from the proposed sale of Chinese-owned video app TikTok. The president's plans come after he reversed his call to ban the popular app in the US due to privacy concerns. Speaking from the White House, Trump said the US would make any sale of the app possible – and should be in line for a share of the proceeds. 'It would come from the sale,' he said. 'Which no one else would be thinking about but me'

Labour queries why MP used unsecured account for classified government businessA personal email account belonging to Liam Fox, the former trade minister, was repeatedly hacked into by Russians who stole classified documents relating to US-UK trade talks, the Guardian understands.The security breaches last year, which are subject to an ongoing police investigation, pose serious questions for the Conservative MP who is currently the UK’s nominee to become director general of the World Trade Organization. Continue reading...

Over the past 20 years, the military intelligence agency has stolen information from targets around the worldLiam Fox, the former UK trade secretary, is merely the latest in a long line of victims apparently duped by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.Over the past two decades GRU spies have stolen classified information from numerous targets around the world. According to Reuters, last summer they broke into Fox’s email account. They made off with secret US-UK trade documents later dumped out before the 2019 election. Continue reading...

New Microsoft headphones are improved in every way, with better sound, aptX, great fit, top controls and cheaper priceMicrosoft is back with an updated set of noise cancelling Surface Headphones that improve on nearly everything from the first set.The £239.99 Surface Headphones 2 are available in black or light grey, but otherwise look very similar to the originals from 2018. Continue reading...

Octogenarian laundry owners amass nearly 600,000 followers with attitude-filled fashion portraitsA Taiwanese octogenarian couple who run a small-town laundry service have become an online fashion sensation by modelling abandoned clothes on Instagram.Chang Wan-ji, 83, and his wife Hsu Sho-er, 84, have racked up nearly 600,000 followers on Instagram over the last month as their attitude-filled fashion portraits went viral. Continue reading...

The former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard has faced a belated backlash from social media companiesIn 1999, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke predicted that the Internet would help give birth to a “coming white revolution”.The news media did not give him friendly coverage, he wrote on his website, but on the internet, he could reach supporters directly, starting a “chain reaction of racial enlightenment”. Continue reading...

A lean, nasty little at-home chiller makes the most of its limitations as a group of friends decide to perform a seance during the pandemicWhen it comes to films and shows made during the global pandemic, there’s a fine line between ingenuity and desperation. We’re all still trapped in some way and while for many of us, that trap might have increased in scale in recent weeks, it remains a trap nonetheless. For directors, at least in some parts of the world, it’s starting to expand considerably but many are still stuck with making the best of very little, armed with just the most basic technology. The limitations they face recall those of the found-footage era, particularly the sub-subgenre of films that took place entirely within laptop screens, such as Unfriended and Searching. But those restrictions were self-inflicted, not forced. In the frantic rush to keep busy and keep profitable, we’re seeing a flood of lazy made-at-home productions that will be forgotten whenever things go back to some sort of normal.Related: The Vigil review – malevolent dybbuk seeks new host scarily Continue reading...

‘Ghostwriter’ campaign said to involve replacing true stories with false ones on news sites in Poland and Lithuania

Top US tech bosses are told that they are censoring political speech, spreading fake news and ‘killing’ the engines of the US economy in a combative and historic congressional hearing.Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Sundar Pichai of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, appeared before members of the house judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee and faced intense questioning on everything from market dominance and data surveillance to military contracts and political censorship

The five and a half hour long hearing on Capitol Hill offered a stunning illustration of the extent of misdeeds by big tech“Our founders would not bow before a king, we should not bow before the emperors of the online economy.” That’s how Congressman David Cicilline started the remarkable hearing on Wednesday in the antitrust subcommittee, where four tech CEOs – Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sundar Pichai of Google, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon – finally had to answer questions about how their businesses operated. And the answers they gave weren’t pretty. The word both Republicans and Democrats used to describe their corporations was dominance, and as members unspooled the evidence they had collected in an investigation over the past year, it’s easy to see why.Almost any moment of the four-hour hearing offered a stunning illustration of the extent of the bad behavior by these corporations. Take Amazon, whose CEO, Jeff Bezos, often seemed off-balance and unaware of his corporation’s own practices. Congresswoman Lucy McBath played audio of a seller on Amazon tearfully describing how her business and livelihood was arbitrarily destroyed by Amazon restricting sales of their product, for no reason the seller could discern. Bezos acted surprised, as he often did. Representative Jamie Raskin presented an email from Bezos saying about one acquisition that: “We’re buying market position not technology.” Bezos then admitted Amazon buys companies purely because of their “market position”, demonstrating that many of hundreds of acquisitions these tech companies have made were probably illegal. Continue reading...

With its stunningly realistic visuals and cutting-edge use of geographic and weather data, this flight sim offers a virtual chance to travel freely once moreFor a few seconds, it seems real. A Cessna 172 Skyhawk flying low over a rural landscape dotted with fields and farmhouses, a copse of tall trees casting shadows over the swaying grass, a winding country lane. Then, on the horizon, the landscape gives way to rugged coastline, and, as the plane flies closer, we glimpse the rippling waves glinting in the evening sun. In real life, I have not seen the ocean for five months and, although I’m just sitting in my kitchen watching a virtual presentation of a video game, I feel a surge of emotion.When the latest instalment in Microsoft’s decades-old Flight Simulator series was first shown at the E3 video game event last year, it drew gasps from the audience. Using two petabytes of geographic data culled from Bing Maps, together with cutting-edge, machine learning algorithms running on the company’s Azure cloud computing network, the game presents a near-photorealistic depiction of the entire planet. Continue reading...

A Silicon Valley startup could offer a template for universities shifting their courses online due to coronavirusNo one could accuse CEO and businessman Ben Nelson of lacking ambition. “I wanted to create a university that serves as a model for other institutions, by being indisputably the best university in the world,” he says, bouncing up and down on a video call from his San Francisco office. “Unless you demonstrate that you are the absolute best, that you can provide an education that Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford cannot come close to, no one will listen. And we are doing exactly that.”Related: 'The MIT of the north': how the government plans to transform ex-mining towns Continue reading...

Cut-price Android offers a first-class experience, long battery life, good camera and great designWith the Nord, OnePlus is returning to its roots with first-class smartphones at mid-range prices, which is a very good thing.The £379 Nord sits under the £599 OnePlus 8 as the firm’s mid-range offering, aiming to bring everything that makes its top-end smartphones so good but at a significantly lower price. Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg’s autocratic nature and fear of anti-trust legislation might see him plump for Trump in the race for president

An early investor in Facebook outlines the unprecedented scale of power wielded by the social media giants – and sets out his blueprint for reform

Our writer dons a headset and turns boxer, air guitarist and saber wielder in a bid to shake off his lockdown lassitudeLike many people, by May I was having a difficult time in lockdown: struggling with homeschooling; stressing about work; tired out by Zoom calls; comfort eating; drinking too much; and feeling nervous about venturing out for short walks, let alone exercise.And then I strapped a computer to my face and gave thin air a damn good pummelling and everything improved a little. Virtual reality’s role in helping me to clamber out of the lockdown blues has changed the way I think about the technology and its potential to play a meaningful role in day-to-day life. Continue reading...

UK to bear brunt of job losses with 600 staff set to go as part of cost-cutting exercise

Expectations had been high following Tesla’s report that it had delivered slightly more than 90,000 vehicles in the second quarterTesla reported a profit for the fourth straight quarter on Wednesday, surpassing a key milestone for the perennially loss-making electric car company.The company reported net income of $110m for the second quarter with a net profit of $104m, which it attributed to “fundamental operational improvement”. Revenue was down 4.9% from a year ago to $6.04bn for the quarter, but still beat estimates of $5.15bn. Continue reading...

Fitness guru who made his name online during lockdown has donated £580,000 of advertising revenue to NHS charitiesAfter 18 weeks, one broken hand, and endless supplies of perky enthusiasm the fitness show that kept millions of Britons occupied during lockdown has come to an end.Joe Wicks called time on his morning PE with Joe workouts on Wednesday, after raising hundreds of thousands of pounds for the NHS and establishing himself as the fitness guru for the pandemic era. Continue reading...

Tech firm says its commitment covers entire supply chain and lifecycle of all its productsApple has pledged to become a carbon-neutral operation by 2030, a commitment that covers its entire supply chain and the lifecycle of all its products, including the electricity consumed in their use.The company is aiming to achieve the goal by means including: Continue reading...

Ministers accused of reckless behaviour over roll-out, with Guardian learning of data breaches

Most of us use a smart speaker to listen to music or set a timer – but lockdown has made 14% of men yearn for a decidedly more intimate relationshipName: Alexa.Age: Five. Continue reading...

Good sound, battery life, case and design, with instant translation and different silicone tip with open-air-like fitGoogle’s AirPods competitor is finally ready. The Pixel Buds are true wireless earbuds that aim to be all things to all people with a hybrid design that’s neither fully open nor isolating.The £179 earphones are Google’s second attempt at Bluetooth earbuds, the first being not great. The new version dispense with the wire and adopt a tried-and-tested approach: earbuds that slot into a small and pocketable case. Continue reading...

Fifty years on, Marion Morrison tells how she followed the return to Bristol of SS Great Britain for the ObserverAs it made its slow way up the Avon in July 1970, people lined the riverbanks to see the 127-year-old incredible hulk return home. After an 8,000-mile, 87-day journey, SS Great Britain was back in its place of birth.Approaching the port of Bristol, the extraordinary ship built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel passed under the Clifton suspension bridge, another of the great engineer’s masterpieces. “Flags were flying, people were roaring and clapping,” recalled one witness. “Something took hold of the people of Bristol,” said another. Continue reading...

Move has enraged drivers and labor organizers who say company should provide protective gear free to workersThe ride-hailing platform Lyft has opened an online store to sell masks and other protective gear as the Covid-19 pandemic intensifies, enraging drivers and labor organizers who say the company should be providing these free.The tech company’s move to sell drivers protective gear rather than provide it resurfaces the debate of whether drivers are employees or independent contractors, and to what extent the tech giants carry responsibility for the work conditions of gig workers. Continue reading...

NSO Group was sued last year by messaging app owned by Facebook

Accounts of Uber and Apple also appear to have been hacked as part of scam instructing followers to transfer cryptocurrencyTwitter suffered a major security breach on Wednesday that saw hackers take control of the accounts of major public figures and corporations, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Apple.The company confirmed the breach Wednesday evening, more than six hours after the hack began, and attributed it to a “coordinated social engineering attack” on its own employees that enabled the hackers to access “internal systems and tools”. Twitter said it was “looking into what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed” in addition to using the compromised accounts to send tweets. Continue reading...

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo accuses Chinese telco of human rights abuses and says employees may have US visas restrictedThe United States has cleared the way for sanctions on employees of the Chinese telecom giant Huawei, expanding its campaign against Beijing.The US secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that Washington would restrict US visas for employees of Huawei and other Chinese firms if they were involved in human rights abuses. Continue reading...

Court defeat for Brussels is reminder of glacial pace at which international tax reform proceedsMargrethe Vestager may as well give up. If the EU’s competition commissioner can’t win her highest-profile case in the EU’s second-highest court, then the EU’s tax arrangements, as they apply to multinational tech companies, will remain a free-for-all.In practice, she may plough on. The Luxembourg-based general court’s order that Apple does not need to pay €13bn (£11.7bn) in back taxes to the Irish government can be challenged. Lawyers may yet enjoy many more years of lucrative work. Continue reading...

Company’s first hardware product will feature HD cameras, eight microphones and touch displayZoom, the company behind the video-conferencing software that experienced a huge boom during the Covid-19 crisis, has announced a new product for those of us stuck working from home: a 27-inch computer screen.Zoom For Home, the company’s first hardware product, is aimed at the growing number of people whose remote-work involves a substantial amount of time spent on Zoom calls with colleagues, clients and suppliers. Continue reading...

Beijing warns that removal of telecoms firm from UK network by 2027 will undermine trustThe British government’s decision to ban the use of Huawei in its 5G network is groundless and indicative of the UK’s junior status in its alliance with the US, Beijing has said as it vowed to take measures to protect the interests of Chinese companies.“Listening to all the rhetoric it was clear the UK had succumbed to pressure from China hawks and bashers,” said Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador to the UK. “We are not asking you to take sides between China and the US. We are just asking you to take the right side of the argument. Britain can only be Great Britain when it has an independent foreign policy.” Continue reading...

European commission failed to prove Apple had benefited from arrangement, court findsThe European commission has been dealt a major blow in its battle to stop EU member states granting sweetheart tax deals to multinational corporations after the bloc’s general court ruled that Apple did not need to pay €13bn (£11.7bn) in back taxes to the Irish government.The Luxembourg-based court found the EU’s executive body had failed to prove that the iPhone maker benefited from an allegedly illegal arrangement with the Irish authorities, in a decision with wide repercussions for the bloc’s plans to clamp down on tax avoidance. Continue reading...

Coronavirus, trade, Hong Kong and human rights all in play as relations teeter over 5G role

Ernest Maragall revelation set to boost calls for inquiry into possible domestic espionage

Speaker of regional parliament was told he was targeted by spyware in ‘possible case of domestic espionage’Current and former leaders of Catalonia’s pro-independence government have called for an inquiry after it emerged that the speaker of the region’s parliament has been warned that his mobile was targeted using spyware its makers say is only sold to governments to track criminals and terrorists.On Monday, a joint investigation by the Guardian and El País revealed that Roger Torrent and at least two other pro-independence supporters have been told they were targeted last year in what experts describe as a “possible case of domestic political espionage” in Europe. Continue reading...