Technology | The Guardian

Away from the vitriol, researchers are investigating concrete steps companies, officials and the rest of us can take to tackle the crisisIt was nearing midnight on Tuesday, 12 January when the final plank of Donald Trump’s social media platform fell away. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, Snapchat and, finally, YouTube had all come to the same conclusion: that their platforms – multibillion-dollar American companies that dominate American political discourse – could not be safely used by the president of the United States.In less than a week, a new president will take office. But considering the role social media played in elevating Trump to the presidency and its part in spreading misinformation, conspiracy theories and calls for violence, it is clear that the end of the Trump presidency won’t provide an immediate fix. There is something fundamentally broken in social media that has allowed us to reach this violent juncture, and the de-platforming of Trump is not going to address those deeper pathologies. Continue reading...

GPS art or GPX is a combination of both fitness and artistic activity. Your movements, traced by GPS signals, become the paint on a city-sized canvas. You can run, ride or walk your artwork through popular fitness tracking apps such as Strava and the path of your choosing. Tackling the streets and cycleways of Sydney, Guardian Australia find out first hand the physical challenges and creative triumphs of the activity. Continue reading...

Shell company owned by two Russians cut ties with internet host of 8kun, which has been linked to other acts of violenceA far-right website that was among the platforms used to organize the deadly violence at the US Capitol has again been forced to find new internet service protection after a shell company owned by two Russians and registered in Scotland cut ties with the platform’s internet host. Continue reading...

We spoke to convicted hacker turned security consultant Kevin Mitnick to find out how to maintain your security onlineIf you use the popular messaging service WhatsApp you may have noticed a pop-up message in recent days asking you to accept the service’s new terms and conditions by 8 February in order to continue using it.The update has prompted calls for users to leave the popular messaging service in favour of alternatives such as Signal and Telegram. And on Friday a legal challenge on privacy grounds was filed against WhatsApp in India, the service’s biggest market. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has reported an influx of 25 million global users to the rival service since the announcement was made. Continue reading...

GPS art, or GPX, is a fitness and artistic activity where your movements, traced by GPS signals, become the paint on a city-sized canvasHenry David Thoreau once wrote: “This world is but a canvas to our imagination.” More than 150 years later, a new generation of artists tracing their movements via GPS to create sketches are proving Thoreau’s words remarkably prescient.That’s what Strava art is at its core. Named after the fitness tracking app that has previously helped reveal secret US military bases – and also referred to as GPS art or GPX – your movements are the paint and a city block your brush stroke. Think of them as 21st century digital geoglyphs. Continue reading...

As Silicon Valley businesses shutter offices, the city looks very different. But will the change outlast the coronavirus?The pandemic has brought the commercial real estate market in San Francisco to a new low, with work-from-home policies and office closures slowing Silicon Valley-driven business expansion to numbers not seen in at least three decades.New office-leasing activity in 2020 dropped a staggering 71% compared with the year before, according to the real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield, from 7.7m to 2.2m sq ft – the lowest since the early 1990s. Tenant demand also halved during the pandemic, from 6.6m sq ft to 3.3m sq ft. Continue reading...

New data reveals that more than two million users are using an outdated version of the contact tracing app

Once the preserve of salty old sea dogs, the folk songs are the latest craze on the social media site. But is it wholesome fun, or a sign lockdown has broken us?Name: Sea shanties.Age: At least 600 years old. Continue reading...

NSPCC welcomes changes as it says abusers are taking advantage of pandemic to target children onlineChildren on TikTok will face “groundbreaking” new restrictions in an attempt to prevent grooming on the platform, the video-sharing company has announced, with particularly strict new rules for users under 16.The platform, which has a lower age limit of 13, said users under 16 would no longer be able to receive comments from strangers, have their videos used for “duets” or mark their posts as available to be downloaded. Their accounts will default to “private”, which prevents anyone other than friends from viewing their videos. Continue reading...

The tech giant says it is ‘running a few experiments that will each reach about 1% of Google Search users in Australia’Google has been hiding some Australian news sites from search results, in a move media outlets say is a show of “extraordinary power” as the tech company bargains with the Australian government over financial payment for content.The Australian government is attempting to impose a new code on Google and Facebook that would force them to negotiate a fair price for displaying local news content. Continue reading...

Police arrest 34-year-old suspected of operating site selling drugs, credit card data and malwareA German-led police sting has taken down the “world’s largest” darknet marketplace, whose Australian alleged operator used it to facilitate the sale of drugs, stolen credit card data and malware, prosecutors said Tuesday.At the time of its closure, DarkMarket had nearly 500,000 users and more than 2,400 vendors worldwide, as the coronavirus pandemic leads much of the street trade in narcotics to go online. Continue reading...

Stefan Thomas is not the first person to forget a password, but memory lapses are rarely so potentially costlyStefan Thomas has just two chances left to get his hands on his $240m (£175m) fortune.Thomas is a San Francisco-based computer programmer, and a decade ago he was given 7,002 bitcoins as a reward for making a video explaining how the cryptocurrency works. Continue reading...

Facebook is cracking down on content using the 'stop the steal' phrase behind false US election claims as the firm's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, says she’s ‘glad’ Donald Trump was blocked.

The network said it acted after ‘violent events in Washington’ when a pro-Trump mob stormed the US CapitolTwitter has said it has suspended more than 70,000 accounts since Friday that were primarily dedicated to sharing QAnon content as the social media site continued to crack down on content after supporters of Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol.“Given the violent events in Washington DC, and increased risk of harm, we began permanently suspending thousands of accounts that were primarily dedicated to sharing QAnon content on Friday afternoon,” Twitter said in a blog late on Monday. Continue reading...

Company places limits on phrase behind false election claims as Sheryl Sandberg says she’s ‘glad’ president was blockedFacebook is cracking down on content using the phrase “stop the steal”, the rallying cry of Donald Trump supporters who claim without evidence that there was voter fraud in the 2020 elections. Continue reading...

This affectionate spoof of early 90s gaming scores high in nostalgia, but lags without comedic heavy-hittersHere is a throwaway space spoof, an affectionate send-up of the naffness of early 90s video games, that lovingly recreates the vintage details with its production design and fight choreography, but is troublingly low on scripted gags. It plays out in two dimensions: virtual and real life. Inside a computer game, explorer Max Cloud is an intergalactic hero, a preposterous macho knucklehead in latex, sturdily performed by actor and martial arts expert Scott Adkins, who has appeared in a few of the Marvels. I did wonder if an actor with the comic chops for some megaton silliness might have done some heavier lifting here.Meanwhile, in actual Brooklyn, teenage gamer Sarah (Isabelle Allen) is hooked on the Max Cloud video game. After a fight with her dad she is mysteriously teleported into the game – and into the body of a minor character, chef Jake (Elliot James Langridge). You might consider this a waste of a female lead – putting her into the body of a male actor – but there she stays for most of the movie. For any chance of making it back to her real life she must complete the game with the help of her friend playing in her bedroom (Franz Drameh). John Hannah is painfully unfunny as ultra baddie Revengor, who wants to destroy planet Earth over a past snub. Continue reading...

Regulator cautions public over risk of products promising high returns from cryptoassetsConsumers should be prepared to lose all their money if they invest in schemes promising high returns from digital currencies such as bitcoin, a City watchdog has warned.The volatile nature of cryptoassets was highlighted again on Monday as bitcoin dropped 28% from Friday’s record high of $42,000, having doubled its value in less than a month. Despite the day’s decline to $30,200, bitcoin is still only at its lowest level since the first day of the new year. Continue reading...

Amazon stops hosting social network, used as communication hub by US Capitol riotersThe “free speech” social network Parler, popular with Donald Trump supporters, has been forced off the internet after Amazon pulled its hosting services.The Twitter clone, which gained notoriety as a communication hub for the rioters who stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday, had already suffered a major hit to its reach over the weekend, as first Google and then Apple suspended its app from their stores. Continue reading...

The Czech playwright Karel Čapek coined the expression for artificial men in 1921. Now they are far more than science fiction“Listen Josef,” said the Czech playwright Karel Čapek to his brother. “I have an idea for a play.”Josef, an artist of some renown, was painting furiously and unimpressed by his brother’s intrusion. “What kind of play?” he asked, sharply. Karel set out the plot. In the future, humans have created synthetic, humanoid creatures to increase productivity in the factories and fight wars on the battlefield. Built as slave workers, they will eventually rise up and wipe out the human race. Continue reading...

After 2020, anyone would be forgiven for wanting to escape Earth, and Mars, the moon and the asteroid belt beckonThis Nasa telescope, which is to replace the Hubble, has been subject to many delays – its first planned launch was in 2007. A March 2020 takeoff was delayed due to Covid, while its initial $500m budget has spiralled to more than $10bn (£7.4bn). It is a more sensitive telescope than the Hubble and once operational it will be able to observe the formation of some of the first galaxies. It will be launched on a European Ariane 5 rocket on 31 October. Continue reading...

Big investors are eyeing the once volatile cryptocurrency as a hedge against inflationBitcoin is back, along with the debate over its value. The price of the digital currency is soaring and last week it hit more than $40,000 for the first time, having doubled in less than a month.Its price has jumped by more than 700% since the pandemic was first declared in March last year, rising from about $5,000. Continue reading...

Gates’ Cascade Investment fund teams up with US private equity firm on offer for Signature AviationBill Gates has joined a £3bn bidding war to buy the world’s largest private jet operator just as he prepares to publish his new book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.Cascade Investment, the fund that manages much of Gates’s $134bn personal fortune, announced on Friday it had teamed up with US private equity firm Blackstone in a bid for British private jet operator Signature Aviation. Continue reading...

With the nation working and learning from home, the need for full-fibre broadband is greater than everFree full-fibre, publicly owned broadband was never supposed to be the flagship policy of Labour’s doomed 2019 election campaign. Earlier in the year the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, had been touring the country and hearing people complain that poor broadband was at least as much of a problem as poor transport links, and possibly a bigger one. Back in 2017, a report by University College London had explored “universal basic services” – that is, where the rights of citizenship include unconditional access to free services funded by progressive taxation. “This would enable access to work opportunities,” the study noted, “as well as participation in our democracy as informed citizens.”Related: Telecoms sector has 'no belief' UK will meet broadband targets, MPs find Continue reading...

Platforms have long let his dangerous posts stand – and researchers say the Capitol attack is ‘exactly what we expected’In the 24 hours since the US Capitol in Washington was seized by a Trump-supporting mob disputing the results of the 2020 election, American social media companies have barred the president from their platforms for spreading falsehoods and inciting the crowd.Facebook, Snapchat and Twitch suspended Donald Trump indefinitely. Twitter locked his account temporarily. Multiple platforms removed his messages. Continue reading...

Dating deception makes for regretfully moreish listening, as the MTV hit becomes a podcast. Plus: untangling the events which led to the death of White Helmets founder James Le MesurierCatfish: The Podcast

Government failures will leave thousands of rural homes with slow broadband, spending watchdog saysBoris Johnson’s promise to deliver nationwide “turbocharged” broadband by 2025 will be missed because of a catalogue of government failures, parliament’s spending watchdog has concluded.In a timely report released on Friday as many children struggle to gain access to remote learning during lockdown, the public accounts committee has criticised the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) for failing to make any “meaningful progress” in delivering policies or legal changes to achieve a rapid rollout of gigabit broadband. Continue reading...

Cryptocurrency doubles value in less than a month as supporters say asset is starting to supplant goldBitcoin has surged above the $40,000 (£29,500) mark for the first time in its history after doubling its value in less than a month.The record comes just days after the cryptocurrency hit an all-time high of more than $34,800 on Sunday, which was also the 12th anniversary of the bitcoin network being created. Bitcoin first breached the $20,000 mark in mid-December. Continue reading...

How the Tesla and SpaceX chief rose to the top in the business world, in 10 steps

Facebook CEO accuses president of intending to undermine peaceful transition of power

With a rise in the availability of EV rentals – and a marked increase in charging stations – Oliver Pelling set out on an 800km trip along the Great Ocean RoadThe first blunder of my all-electric road trip occurs in Lorne, some 145km from my Melbourne home.I know, thanks to the PlugShare app – which maps most of the publicly available charging points in Australia – that there is a charger at Lorne Visitor Information Centre. What I don’t know, until I get there, is that this particular charger doesn’t fit my particular car. Continue reading...

Despite her record as a writer and activist, what may have begun as a joke has gained traction, and should make us ask questions that go beyond the credulity of Gen Z

We asked Guardian readers what kept you giggling through a year unlike any other. Here’s what you told usTodrick Hall’s Covid cover of his own song, Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels comes front of mind. – ChrisR22 Continue reading...

Station was banned from the platform for 12 hours but insists it has ‘robust editorial controls’YouTube has reversed a short-lived ban of the digital station TalkRadio from its platform, about 12 hours after it removed the organisation’s channel for what it said were breaches of its community guidelines.The station, part of Rupert Murdoch’s TalkSport network, said it had not been told by the platform what the most recent breach was. A TalkRadio spokesperson said: “We urgently await a detailed response from Google/YouTube about the nature of the breach that has led to our channel being removed from its platform. Continue reading...

Rishi Sunak could prevent steep rise in unemployment if he supports move, says thinktankWhen Target Publishing cut staff pay after the first coronavirus lockdown last year, the magazine group knew it had to make a positive gesture to its employees. So it introduced a four-day week.“I felt better in myself that I was able to give something back to match the sacrifice everyone had made,” says Target’s founder and owner, David Cann. Faced with sliding advertising sales and several cancelled projects, the publisher of 20 titles including Natural Lifestyle and Health Food Business had cut pay for its 30 staff by 20%. Continue reading...

Employees signed cards to join the Alphabet Workers Union, to ensure work at a fair wage and without fear of abuseMore than 200 Google employees in the United States have formed a workers’ union, the first group at a big tech company to do so as the industry faces a reckoning over years of unchecked power.The elected leaders of the Alphabet Workers Union announced the organization in a New York Times opinion piece on Monday, saying they aimed to ensure employees work at a fair wage, without fear of abuse, retaliation or discrimination. Continue reading...

My father, Mike Bennett, who has died aged 91, was a civil engineer who built dams, power stations and roads all over the world and was involved in the construction of the Thames Barrier.He was born in Burnage, Manchester, to Edna (nee Gilpin), a homemaker and keen golfer, and Brian Bennett, a banker. The family moved to London when Mike was a baby, where his father joined the Midland Bank, and then to Yorkshire to escape the Blitz. Continue reading...

The early days of computer programming, and the IT worker stereotypeOn 26 October 1969, the Observer Magazine attempted to get to grips with the burgeoning computer revolution (‘Computer Takeover’).‘What then is a computer?’ asked John Davy. ‘It has been well described as an obedient, very moronic clerk with an exceptionally good memory.’ Well, we’ve all met one of those. Continue reading...

The tech giants’ law-free bonanza is coming to an end on both sides of the Atlantic, but let’s speed up the processIt’s always risky making predictions about the tech industry, but this year looks like being different, at least in the sense that there are two safe bets. One is that the attempts to regulate the tech giants that began last year will intensify; the second that we will be increasingly deluged by sanctimonious cant from Facebook & co as they seek to avoid democratic curbing of their unaccountable power.On the regulation front, last year in the US, Alphabet, Google’s corporate owner, found itself facing major antitrust suits from 38 states as well as from the Department of Justice. On this side of the pond, there are preparations for a Digital Markets Unit with statutory powers that will be able to neatly sidestep the tricky definitional questions of what constitutes a monopoly in a digital age. Instead, the unit will decide on a case-by-case basis whether a particular tech company has “strategic market status” if it possesses “substantial, entrenched market power in at least one digital activity” or if it acts as an online “gateway” for other businesses. And if a company is judged to have this status, then penalties and regulations will be imposed on it. Continue reading...

Institutional investors help cryptocurrency to 47% gain in December as interest in US dollar declinesBitcoin has continued its end-of-year Santa Claus rally, surging to a new high of more than $28,500.The cryptocurrency gained more than 5% to hit $28,572 on Wednesday. It is up 47% since the start of December and is on track for its biggest monthly gain since May 2019. Continue reading...

Manufacturers’ share prices will be dependent on their ability to avoid losses on ‘stranded assets’, says analyst

About 25 million logged on to the PC gaming platform Steam on the biggest ever Christmas Day for the video games industryThis Christmas has been the biggest ever for the video games industry, as lockdown, technological leaps and new consoles combine to bring more interest than ever to the sector.Steam, the PC gaming platform, recorded its largest ever Christmas Day, according to public stats, with almost 25 million people logged on to the service at 3.10pm UK time, more than 6 million of whom were actively playing a game concurrently. That was up from the 15 million who logged on to the service at once on Christmas Day 2019. Continue reading...

Security, data and the services sector are still in limbo after a ‘thin’ agreement struck to avoid disasterDowning Street’s chief Brexit negotiator, Lord Frost, exhausted from months of intense talks, could not hide his glee on Saturday as he hailed the Brexit deal struck between the EU and Brussels as “one of the biggest and broadest agreements ever”. Its effect, he said, would be to allow the UK to “set its own laws again”.“There’s no more role for the European court of justice, there’s no direct effects of EU law, there’s no alignment of any kind, and we’re out of the single market and out of the customs union, just as the manifesto said we would be,” he declared. “This should be the beginning of a moment of national renewal for us. All choices are in our hands as a country and it’s now up to us to decide how we use them and how we go forward in the future.” Continue reading...

An online platform where journalists sell content directly to subscribers is luring eminent voices away from traditional mediaWay back in March, at the beginning of the first lockdown, I fell to wondering what a columnist, academic and blogger under house arrest might usefully do for the duration of his imprisonment. My eye fell on my blog, Memex 1.1, which has been a harmless presence on the web since the mid-1990s and a source of puzzlement to journalistic and academic colleagues alike. The hacks unanimously shared Dr Johnson’s view that “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money”, while my academic colleagues thought it peculiar to waste one’s energy writing anything that would not figure in scholarly citation indices. The idea that one might maintain a blog simply because one enjoyed doing it never crossed their minds.So there it was, with a modest readership, which occasionally spiked as it caught some brief wave of attention. Given that many people were going to be locked down like me, I wondered if the regularity of receiving the blog as an email every morning might be welcome. The thought came from observing how Dave Winer’s wonderful blog, Scripting News, drew an even wider readership after he offered it as a daily email to subscribers. So I began looking for an easy way of doing something similar. Continue reading...

We went down a YouTube rabbit hole, Alan Partridge made a triumphant return and a singular look at cold war espionage came with an irresistible earworm. Plus more of the year’s best pods

Class action claims weak security allowed hackers to take over the smart cameras used on doorbells and in homesDozens of people who say they were subjected to death threats, racial slurs, and blackmail after their in-home Ring smart cameras were hacked are suing the company over “horrific” invasions of privacy.A new class action lawsuit, which combines a number of cases filed in recent years, alleges that lax security measures at Ring, which is owned by Amazon, allowed hackers to take over their devices. Ring provides home security in the form of smart cameras that are often installed on doorbells or inside people’s homes. Continue reading...

Fraud worries as UK company Now:Pensions says ‘third-party contractor’ posted personal details of clients to online public forumAbout 30,000 customers of Now:Pensions face an anxious Christmas after a serious data breach at the pensions provider led to their sensitive personal details being posted on the internet.In an email sent to affected customers, the workplace pensions firm warned that names, postal and email addresses, birth dates and National Insurance numbers all appeared in a public forum online. Continue reading...

A queer coming-of-age story charmed us, a balletic shoot-em-up raised our adrenaline and the star game of lockdown provided a desert-island escape from real life

This is a security failure of enormous proportions – and a wake-up call. The US must rethink its cybersecurity protocols

As the push to diversify the IT sector picks up speed, so too has awareness of unconscious bias. Can technology-enabled ‘blind’ recruitment do a better job of identifying talent?It’s no surprise that decades ago, you were more likely to get a job if your name was Smith rather than Singh – as anti-racism campaigners found. In these more enlightened times, companies have strategies to beat a kneejerk reaction to an unfamiliar name, the “wrong” gender, or the suspect “gut feeling”.Yet the diversity statistics suggest these strategies haven’t yet proved effective in the tech sector. Something certainly hasn’t been going right – tech remains notoriously male, especially higher up the company rungs. Women make up just 20% of IT specialists and just 12% of leadership roles, according to latest analysis by the British Computer Society’s Chartered Institute for IT, and numbers have budged very little over the past five years. Continue reading...