Technology | The Guardian

Is it possible to unsee a movie trailer? To longtime fans, this first look at the forthcoming film points to it being the worst video game tie-in of all timeFor someone who has spent the better part of their adult life arguing the merits of Sonic the Hedgehog, the platforming hero of the Sega Mega Drive era, the trailer for the character’s forthcoming movie is like a 200mph slap in the face. What is so bad about the three-minute teaser unleashed on Tuesday afternoon by Paramount Studios? Where to begin?Is it that Sonic resembles a cheap knock-off Sonic toy your child might win at a fairground stand and then be terrified of (“Daddy, please get it out of my room”)? Is it that Jim Carrey as Dr Robotnik looks like Hercule Poirot crossed with Neo from The Matrix? Is it the laboured idiocy of the whole “save Sonic, save the world” set-up, in which the ratty-looking hedgehog arrives on Earth, sends the US government into a panic, and is befriended by a San Francisco cop played by X-Men actor James Marsden? Why does he have human teeth and nails? Continue reading...

UK telecoms operators targeted over Chinese company’s role in 5G networks

Xbox One, PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch; NetherRealm Studios/Warner Bros Interactive

Deceased may outnumber the living if current growth rates continue, raising questions about what happens to our dataFacebook may eventually have more dead users than living ones.If Facebook continues to grow at its current rate, the site could have 4.9 billion deceased members by 2100, according to a study by Oxford researchers. Even if growth had stopped entirely last year, the study finds, Facebook would be looking at about 1.4 billion dead members by 2100. By 2070, in that scenario, the dead would already outnumber the living. Continue reading...

Theresa May has turned to her national security council to help her decide on whether to allow the Chinese firm Huawei to provide parts of Britain’s 5G network. Guardian reporters Rupert Neate, Alex Hern and Tania Branigan discuss the company at the heart of a diplomatic tussle. Plus, in opinion, David Kogan argues Labour needs clarity on Brexit to have a chance of winning powerWhen the government’s decision to allow Huawei to build parts of Britain’s 5G network leaked from Theresa May’s national security council it set off a furious backlash. Not just that secret cabinet discussions had been revealed, but Britain also found itself in a diplomatic tug of war between the US and China.The US argues the Chinese tech firm is a potential security threat if it has access to critical infrastructure such as 5G networks. Huawei has said the US is creating a smokescreen for protectionism. Continue reading...

Relaunch will let users compare journeys on other services such as tube and busUber is relaunching its London app to include public transport information, allowing users to compare journeys on other services, as well as its private hire cars.The ride-hailing firm said the change, integrating publicly available Transport for London (TfL) live data, would allow its users to make the best choice of journey based on price and time. Continue reading...

Report comes as company faces internal worker turmoil, and a recent $1.7bn fine from the EUGoogle shares slumped on Monday after the company failed to beat analyst predictions, following a year of internal turmoil, privacy concerns, and several international fines.Stock for Alphabet, Google’s parent company, was down 7% in after-hours trading after the company reported first quarter revenue of $36.34bn, lower than the $37.33bn revenue forecast by analysts. The quarter one earnings represent a 17% increase from the same time last year, in which it reported $31.15bn in revenue. Continue reading...

Chinese firm’s 5G equipment described as security risk after council gives partial go-ahead

Streaming service boosted by better-than-expected performance in US and CanadaSpotify has reached 100 million paying subscribers, in a landmark for the music streaming service as it faces competition from major tech firms.The number of users willing to pay for the service soared 32% in the first three months of 2019 compared with a year earlier, Spotify said on Monday. Continue reading...

In Discworld Noir, they help untangle puzzles. In Red Dead Redemption 2, they flesh out the central character. Is the notebook gaming’s most powerful narrative tool?We use notebooks to give form to the intangible, jotting down half-formed ideas and strategies with the aim of corralling them into coherence. We record and reflect on events in our lives, a ritual that narrativises our experiences and makes them comprehensible. Notebooks are a technology, the most ordinary and unspectacular instance of cyborg enhancement – an extension of our memories. And all this makes them a fascinating motif in video games.In Discworld Noir, a little-known adventure game from 1999, you play as a private detective named Lewton, plodding the streets of a hardboiled version of Terry Pratchett’s fictional city-state Ankh-Morpork and investigating murders and disappearances that pay homage to classic noir fiction. Lewton’s greatest asset is his notebook. Here, he writes down the names of suspects, clues, testimony and other key information. This simple device distinguishes Noir from other games in the point-and-click tradition from which it emerged. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber talks to psychologist Pete Etchells about his new book, which explores both his personal relationship with video games and how society views – and could learn to view – this form of entertainment.Pete Etchells didn’t understand why there was such a divide in how society viewed video games. The debates he saw were always heated. One side believed video games were brilliant and had a positive effect on our lives. The other believed they were dangerous on multiple levels for kids and adults alike.So he did some research to try and figure out some of the biggest questions we ask when we discuss video games: do they make us violent? Do they make us anti-social? Are they addictive? The result was a book, which was published at the start of April 2019. Continue reading...

Songwriters and composers look to use new copyright laws to cash in on the boom in online gamingThe global phenomenon Fortnite recently attracted millions of fans to a virtual gig by the real-world DJ Marshmello and now songwriters and composers are seeking to use new copyright laws to receive their cut of royalties from music featured in the booming world of online gaming.PRS for Music, the body that makes sure 140,000 songwriters, composers and publishers in the UK are paid when their music is used across the globe, has revealed that music royalties rose 4.4% to a record £746m last year. Continue reading...

I checked the reviews on a comparison website and they were uniformly glowingI recently sent an iPhone for recycling to PhoneConvert for which they have still not paid me. I found them through a price comparison site, which featured uniformly good reviews. They were slow to respond and after some chasing they got back to me saying the phone was still locked to my iCloud account; this was not the case. When I complained they offered to return the phone; I accepted, but three weeks later I haven’t heard from them. I’ve since checked and found similar stories from customers who sent them devices and were never paid. I’m concerned I will never see the phone or the £70 I was promised.

Government told to make independent decision after move to involve Chinese company sparked criticismChina’s ambassador to the UK has urged the government to ignore external pressure over a politically and diplomatically charged decision to involve the Chinese firm Huawei in building the 5G communications network.In China’s first official comments on the row, Beijing’s ambassador to London, Liu Xiaoming, urged the UK to make the “right decision independently” over the suppliers for the new network. Continue reading...

Vladimir Putin will soon sign the ‘sovereign internet’ bill to allow greater monitoring of traffic. But what are its other consequences?Earlier this year, US officials briefed reporters on an extraordinary operation: they claimed to have launched an offensive cyber-attack against Russia to protect the integrity of the country’s midterm elections.Government hackers from US Cyber Command had pre-emptively cut off the internet to a St Petersburg office building that houses the Internet Research Agency, better known as Russia’s troll factory, to prevent the spread of misinformation on election day in November 2018, US newspapers reported. Continue reading...

It may be a niche interest, but there are few things more pleasurably weird than driving a car into the seaDutton Surf

The counselling psychologist and author of All the Ghosts in the Machine discusses one of the most contentious issues of our ageElaine Kasket is a counselling psychologist based in London. Her first book, All the Ghosts in the Machine: Illusions of Immortality in the Digital Age, examines the ethical and technical issues surrounding our data when we die.If I were to fall under a bus tomorrow, what would happen to my Gmail and Facebook accounts?

An eye-opening historical picture shows how China’s online strategy takes aim at the solidarity of its citizens – aided by US tech companiesA few years ago, Facebook started encouraging users to give it their phone numbers. This, it said, was only for security purposes: a way to confirm one’s login credentials. Now, as a result, anyone can look up a user’s profile via their phone number, Facebook “shares” phone numbers with its other apps (such as Instagram), and advertisers can target those numbers too. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he had developed a new “vision” for social networking that would be “privacy-focused”, and if you believe that then I have a forecast on the economic benefits of Brexit to sell you. And yet, in certain quarters of tech-savvy international relations , it’s always China that is blamed for betraying the promise of a free and open internet.As James Griffiths’s excellent book on China’s online strategy acknowledges, that promise – the 1990s cyber-utopian vision of an anarchist, autonomous electronic frontier without borders – hardly needed an authoritarian quasi-communist state to betray it. Western corporations did perfectly well on their own. But Griffiths perhaps gives too much credence to that idealistic picture in the first place: the internet was, after all, born from military technology in the first place – the Arpanet, funded by the US Defense Department – and it’s not quite accurate to say, as he does, that it was designed without reference to geography. (The decentralised nature of the military network was precisely a geographical strategy to prevent an enemy from taking it down by destroying any particular node.) Continue reading...

The group published a new set of demands, which include an investigation and a public response from co-founder Larry Page

Target valuation would be largest float for US tech company since Facebook in 2012Uber has unveiled the terms of a hotly anticipated stock market float which it hopes will value the ride-hailing service at more than $91bn (£70bn).While the target is $10bn less than some bankers suggested the 10-year-old firm might be worth, the valuation is more than double the value of the 116-year-old carmaker Ford and would be the largest float by a US tech company since Facebook’s in 2012. Continue reading...

Readers air their views on the role of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei in the development of Britain’s 5G networkThe government is right that Huawei is not owned by the Chinese regime, but it seems to have missed – or ignored – the fact that it is probably controlled by the Chinese Communist party (Conservatives will push next party leader to scrap Huawei’s ‘non-core’ 5G contract, 25 April). Huawei is technically majority-owned by its employee union. As with all legal trade unions in China, however, Huawei’s union will be controlled by the Communist party. Additionally, as with other large privately owned firms, Huawei has a party branch, currently headed by Zhou Daiqi. Although Mr Zhou is Huawei’s director of ethics and compliance, it is almost certainly in his role as party secretary that he serves as a member of Huawei’s executive committee.As China is a Leninist state, it is the Communist party that ultimately controls all government agencies, state-owned companies and, probably, private companies where it has a formal presence. It seems highly likely that when it comes to strategic decisions, it is the party – via Mr Zhou – that controls Huawei. It beggars belief that the government does not understand the Communist party’s decisive role in Huawei. Consequently, we must ask why it’s planning to allow the company any role at all in Britain’s 5G network. Is it because Brexit Britain will be in desperate need of any investment, including that controlled by the Chinese Communist party? Or is there something else going on? If this were a Labour government, the rightwing media would be telling us that Jeremy Corbyn was in the pay of China. But Theresa May? Surely not.

New WHO guidelines warn of the dangers of too much screen time. Quite right: however in my house, it has its benefitsIt is the Easter holidays, and on the streets of New York, the happy sounds of the coming of spring: children’s laughter, birdsong and the thin, repetitive jingles turned out by animation factories in the far east and uploaded on to kids’ YouTube, to be consumed like crack. A few days into the holiday, and you can’t stand in line in a supermarket without the strains of a smartphone issuing from the depths of a stroller.Related: WHO warnings over children's screen time disputed by UK experts Continue reading...

Britain faces lobbying after Chinese firm wins approval to supply 5G networkDonald Trump’s administration is expected to put further pressure on the UK to reconsider the decision to allow Chinese telecoms company Huawei to help build parts of the UK’s 5G telecoms network.The US has arranged for a representative from the state department, which has repeatedly warned of the risks of using Huawei, to give a briefing on Monday. Continue reading...

Former ambassador to Afghanistan has spent much of his career on security issuesSir Mark Sedwill suddenly became Britain’s most powerful civil servant last autumn, after it became clear that Sir Jeremy Heywood was terminally ill. He took the job without having to go through a formal interview process.Already the country’s national security adviser, he had been deputising for Heywood and, having worked with Theresa May for several years, the 54-year-old was someone the notoriously reticent prime minister felt she could trust. Continue reading...

Right-hand drive version of more affordable electric car available to order on 1 or 2 MayTesla’s latest and more affordable electric car, the Model 3, will finally be available to order in the UK from early May, according to the firm’s chief executive, Elon Musk.More than 18 months since deliveries of the smaller electric saloon car began in the US, Musk announced that UK orders could be placed from next week, on 1 or 2 May. Those with reservations, which require a £1,000 deposit, will have priority access. Continue reading...

Ministers have denied being the source of the NSC leak, but which of them would benefit from it?One of five cabinet ministers who spoke out in opposition to plans to allow the Chinese telecoms firm Huawei to help build the UK’s 5G network at Tuesday’s tense meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) were being touted as the most likely source of a destabilising leak. As an inquiry led by the cabinet secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill, began on Thursday, all five were rushing to categorically deny it could have been them. But, despite the denials, could one of them have been behind the disclosure?Gavin Williamson Continue reading...

Pro gamer and Xbox On presenter Ben Perkin gives some tips on which weapons to seek out in the latest battle royale hit.Since its surprise launch in February, Apex Legends has established itself as a battle royale staple, amassing 50 million players in a month and giving established genre leaders PUBG and Fortnite a turbo-charged run for their money. Designed by the minds behind Call of Duty 4, it’s an unforgiving experience with lightning-fast gunfights, so the right weapons make all the difference. We sat down with pro gamer and Xbox On presenter Ben Perkin, aka Bennycentral, to rank every gun in the game, based on the latest patch, launched earlier this month.20. Mozambique Continue reading...

Senior figures in Theresa May’s cabinet deny role in leaking details of vote in National Security Council meetingCabinet members who were at Tuesday’s National Security Council (NSC) have been sent an ultimatum by Whitehall’s most powerful official to confess or deny whether they leaked a controversial decision to allow Chinese telecoms firm Huawei to help build the UK’s 5G phone network.Cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill is understood to have written to those present and demanded that they tell him by 2pm on Thursday whether they were involved and would be willing to cooperate with an inquiry, prompting the five prime suspects to scramble to “categorically deny” that they were behind the leak. Continue reading...

Top watchdog promises to force change following Cambridge Analytica scandal as New York announces new investigationFacebook broke Canadian privacy laws when it collected the information of some 600,000 citizens, a top watchdog in the country said on Thursday, pledging to seek a court order to force the social media company to change its practices.Canada’s privacy commissioner, Daniel Therrien, made his comments while releasing the results of an investigation, opened a year ago, into a data sharing scandal involving Facebook and the now-defunct British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. Continue reading...

Jeff Bezos touts results but report, which reveals Amazon tracks and fires workers who miss productivity targets, casts shadowAmazon made a profit of more than $1bn a month for the first three months of the year, the company announced on Thursday.The retail and tech giant reported a profit of $3.6bn for the three months ending 31 March as sales reached $59.7bn. Profits were more than double last year’s and the company has now recorded four straight quarters in a row of record profits. Continue reading...

Company beat sales and profit expectations to join Apple and Amazon in prestigious clubMicrosoft has become the third publicly listed US company, after Apple and Amazon, to boast a market value of more than $1tn after bumper quarterly results boosted its share price.The company beat sales and profits expectations in the three months to 31 March, thanks in part to its cloud computing business, which signed up major corporate clients over the period. Continue reading...

The highly anticipated postapocalyptic adventure builds a believable, thrilling world, but populates it with cardboard cut-out survivorsAfter only 10 minutes, you realise something about Days Gone that will come to mind throughout the next 20 hours or so: it is as if Far Cry was set in a B-movie version of The Last of Us universe. If you’re okay with that, you’re going to have a heck of a ride.The latest title from Sony’s SIE Bend Studio (responsible for the Syphon Filter series) is set in the beautiful, rural Pacific Northwest, after the spread of a virus that turns victims into the kind of absolutely-not-zombies we saw in Danny Boyle’s film 28 Days Later. Survivors either hole up together in paranoid communities or drift from one compound to the next, killing the infected for bounties. Continue reading...

Derek needs to find a laptop with Windows 10 Home’s device encryption to keep his data safeI want to buy a new Windows 10 laptop for home use, and I want one with device encryption capability, so that the boot drive is encrypted. Until recently, this has only been possible with Windows Professional editions using BitLocker. I now see that if a laptop has the right specification, all versions of Windows 10 can have device encryption turned on.The problem is that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to get information from mainstream laptop vendors as to whether a specific model supports device encryption. Recent MacBooks are capable of using FileVault and Apple spells out which models support it, so why is this information so hard to find for Windows laptops? DerekI’m glad you asked because you’re right: there’s a shocking lack of information about device encryption on laptops, and this applies to Microsoft, to PC manufacturers, and to retailers. It’s also something that laptop PC reviewers rarely seem to mention, which makes it hard, if not impossible, to tell how many laptops are compatible with Windows 10’s device encryption. Continue reading...

Firm reveals losses of $2.90 a share after waiting more than an hour after markets closeTesla posted larger-than-expected losses in its first-quarter earnings report, as the company struggles with production rates and was forced to raise prices on a number of its cars.The electric carmaker reported a loss of $2.90 a share in its filing, weaker than the $1.30 loss a share experts were expecting. The company’s stock closed out the day at $258.66 a share and prices fluctuated wildly in after hours trading. Continue reading...

Company makes revelation in financial reports showing first-quarter revenue growth to more than $15bnFacebook is expecting to pay as much as $5bn to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), it revealed in first quarter financial reports, which otherwise showed continued revenue growth to more than $15bn for the first three months of the year.Facebook recorded a $3bn legal expense “in connection with the inquiry of the FTC into our platform and user data practices”, the company said. The expenses result in a 51% year-over-year decline in net income, to just $2.4bn. Absent this one-time expense, the company noted, Facebook’s earnings per share would have beaten analyst expectations, and its operating margin (22%) would have been 20 points higher. Continue reading...

May has given Chinese telecoms firm limited role in supplying future 5G mobile networkSenior Tory MPs have expressed alarm about Theresa May’s readiness to give the Chinese telecoms firm Huawei a limited role in supplying the future 5G mobile phone network against the advice of some cabinet ministers, security chiefs and the US.Huawei will be banned from supplying core parts of the network but will get a role in non-core technology, according to leaks from a meeting of the national security council (NSC). Continue reading...

The UK must weigh its ties to the US and Australia against the value of Chinese friendshipIt may sound like an argument about technology, but in reality it is a battle of geopolitics. Should Brexit Britain yield to pressure from the US and ban Chinese hi-tech manufacturer Huawei from supplying kit to British mobile phone companies?Or should the UK keep the door open to China – and benefit not just from cheaper technology but across the economy in sectors such as nuclear power, where the world’s most populous country has shown it is willing to invest. Continue reading...

New smartphone with Leica quad camera has 5x optical zoom, super low-light performance and fun featuresHuawei’s latest top-end phone, the P30 Pro, has a genuinely groundbreaking new quad camera system on the back with amazing low-light performance and the first 5x optical zoom enabling a practically spycam-like 50x digital zoom.The new £900 phone, from the firm that continues to be at the centre of a political storm, has the familiar metal frame, curved glass and all-screen design of 2018-19. New for the P30 Pro are some stunning colour options, including the pearlescent oil slick-like “breathing crystal” and the eye-popping amber sunrise. If you want a phone that gloriously embraces colour, this is it. Continue reading...

Telecoms firm will still be able to supply some technology, but decision may anger BeijingTheresa May has ordered that Chinese telecoms supplier Huawei be banned from supplying core parts of the future 5G mobile phone network, following a meeting of ministers on the National Security Council (NSC).Huawei will be allowed to supply some “non-core” technology to UK phone companies, insiders said, but several ministers in the meeting on Tuesday raised concerns even about that concession, arguing instead for a total ban on the supplier. Continue reading...

Shares closed the day up 4% at $11.99 while revenue increased 39% to $320m in the first quarter of 2019Snapchat has seen user growth for the first time in a year, the company announced on Tuesday, after it improved its much-maligned Android app. The results beat Wall Street predictions and sent shares soaring after hours.The company has been slowly rolling out updates to the app after users complained about blurry images and low-quality videos. In a call with investors on Tuesday, the Snapchat CEO, Evan Spiegel, said a well-developed Android app was “the price of admission” to international markets and acknowledged that users turned off by previous Android iterations might not immediately jump on the new version. Continue reading...

Social media platform’s revenues up 18% as president criticises its treatment of himTwitter has reported better-than-expected financial results, sending its shares surging, as Donald Trump accused the social media platform of “playing political games”.Revenues for the first quarter climbed by 18% to $787m (£605m), beating Wall Street forecasts of $776m. Revenues were boosted by ad sales that also rose 18%, to $679m. Its shares jumped nearly 13% to $38.81. A year ago, they were changing hands at $31.22. Continue reading...

A letter on Github demanded companies comply with labor laws, limiting workers to 40 hours a week versus a 12-hour day standardMicrosoft employees have published a letter on the software development platform Github in solidarity with tech workers in China.Workers at tech companies in the country have used the Microsoft-owned platform to complain about grueling working conditions and the “996” standard in the industry, a philosophy endorsed by the tech billionaire Jack Ma. The name is based on the idea of working from 9am to 9pm, six days a week. Continue reading...

Reviewers reported the screens on the $2,000 Galaxy Fold flickering, freezing and dying on test units within daysSamsung is pushing back this week’s planned public launch of its highly anticipated, $2,000 folding phone after reports that reviewers’ phones were breaking.The company had been planning to release the Galaxy Fold on Friday, with a 3 May release date in the UK, but instead it will now run more tests and announce a new launch date in the “coming weeks”. Continue reading...

Analysts predict first quarterly drop in earnings since 2015 on $3bn rise in turnoverFacebook is this week expected to report a rare decline in profits after a string of privacy breaches and fake news scandals.With its founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg under pressure to clean up the social network, analysts predict the company’s net profit will drop to $4.7bn (£3.6bn) in the first quarter, from nearly $5bn a year ago. Continue reading...

The video, widely shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, shows the parked EV emit smoke and burst into flames seconds laterTesla has sent a team to investigate a video on Chinese social media which showed a parked Tesla Model S car exploding, the latest in a string of fire incidents involving the company’s cars.The video, time stamped Sunday evening and widely shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, shows the parked EV emit smoke and burst into flames seconds later. A video purportedly of the aftermath showed a line of three cars completely destroyed. Continue reading...

A Guardian report recently revealed a secret network of accounts operated by US Immigration and Customs EnforcementThe Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has called on Facebook to address the proliferation of undercover law enforcement accounts on the social networking site following a Guardian report that revealed a secret network of accounts operated by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).EFF, a digital civil liberties not-for-profit, said law enforcement agencies are able to create fake accounts to spy on users, despite Facebook’s policy which prohibits all users, including government agencies, from making them. Continue reading...

Carmaker says man trespassed on factory in California and drove at security guardTesla has been granted a temporary restraining order to prevent an alleged harasser from approaching the carmaker’s California factory.The electric carmaker claimed in its application for the order that the man had repeatedly harassed its employees. He allegedly controls a Twitter account which frequently claimsthat Tesla engages in fraud and which claims to be betting that Tesla shares will fall. Continue reading...

GCHQ survey finds millions using most obvious passwords – including ‘password’, ‘qwerty’ and superhero namesCybercriminals are using increasingly devious scams to con internet users into revealing precious online information. Yet millions of people have saved fraudsters the bother of deploying trickery and temptation by picking bizarrely simple passwords that feature on a new hotlist of online security howlers.One of them, for example, is “password”. Continue reading...

We test and control drugs, so why do we freely allow the spread of potentially harmful products by unregulated entrepreneurs?The headline above an essay in a magazine published by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) caught my eye. “Facial recognition is the plutonium of AI”, it said. Since plutonium – a by-product of uranium-based nuclear power generation – is one of the most toxic materials known to humankind, this seemed like an alarmist metaphor, so I settled down to read.The article, by a Microsoft researcher, Luke Stark, argues that facial-recognition technology – one of the current obsessions of the tech industry – is potentially so toxic for the health of human society that it should be treated like plutonium and restricted accordingly. You could spend a lot of time in Silicon Valley before you heard sentiments like these about a technology that enables computers to recognise faces in a photograph or from a camera. There, it’s regarded as universally beneficial. If you’ve ever come across a suggestion on Facebook to tag a face with a suggested individual’s name, for example, then you’ve encountered the technology. And it’s come on in leaps and bounds as cameras, sensors and machine-learning software have improved and as the supply of training data (images from social media) has multiplied. We’ve now reached the point where it’s possible to capture images of people’s faces and identify them in real time. Which is the thing that really worries Stark. Continue reading...

Months after a Which? investigation into the manufacture of misleading reviews on Amazon, most are still activeConsumers continue to risk being ripped off as a result of fake review “factories” on Facebook that manufacture misleading Amazon product reviews, says Which? It told Guardian Money that “nearly all” of the Facebook groups it uncovered last autumn were still active this month.Earlier this week it claimed Amazon’s system was being undermined by a flood of fake five-star reviews for unfamiliar brands. Researchers analysed listings of hundreds of popular tech products and found top-rated items were dominated by brands with names such as Itshiny, Vogek and Aitalk, many with thousands of unverified reviews. Continue reading...