Technology | The Guardian

CEO defended Facebook’s decision not to ban political ads and said company will ‘stand up for free expression’Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive, has unveiled a new approach to political advertising which he described as a stand for the principles of free speech, but also one that will “piss off a lot of people”.In a candid discussion at the Silicon Slopes Tech Summit 2020 in Salt Lake City on Friday, Zuckerberg said that since his company is criticized for both what it does and does not do in terms of monitoring use of its platform, it will now support free speech “because in order to be trusted, people need to know what you stand for”. Continue reading...

The psychologist talks about the widespread fear that smartphones are harmful to our wellbeing – and the difficulty of proving itAmy Orben is a research fellow at Emmanuel College and the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge. She works in the field of experimental psychology and her speciality is analysing large-scale datasets to determine how social media and the use of digital technology affect the wellbeing of teenagers. Her latest paper, co-written with Prof Andrew Przybylski, looks at teenage sleep and technology engagement.In recent years there has been a great deal of speculation about the possible harmful effects of digital technology, particularly smartphones, on mental health, the ability to concentrate, and sleep patterns. Is there any sound evidence to support these concerns?

Though Steve Jobs’s sleek tablet was a worldwide hit, it can still be naggingly awkward to useLast Monday, the Apple iPad turned 10. On 27 January 2010, Steve Jobs walked on to the stage of a San Francisco auditorium carrying with him the answer to years of fevered speculation. “Everyone at the event that day knew why they were there,” wrote John Vorhees, “and what would be announced”. Jobs acknowledged as much up front, saying that he had a “truly magical and revolutionary product” to unveil. “Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet,” observed the normally sober Wall Street Journal, “it had some commandments written on it.”This was three years on from the launch of the iPhone, the device that really transformed Apple into a tech giant, so everyone thought they knew roughly what the new device would look like – a bigger block of aluminium and glass with a touch-sensitive screen. Over at Microsoft, where the Windows team led by Steve Sinofsky were watching the live stream, they definitely knew what to expect. After all, Microsoft had been experimenting with tablets for years: a tablet, to them, was a portable slab which had a keyboard and a stylus. The tech media, for their part, also “knew” two things: the new device would be Apple’s answer to the cheap netbooks that were then the sensation du jour and, knowing Apple, it wouldn’t be cheap. Continue reading...

Tony Harding, 79, was left with a heavy exercise bike he did not order and told he would have to dispose of it himselfA pensioner from Bristol has described his disbelief after Amazon delivered a 28kg (62lb) exercise machine he had not ordered, and then flatly refused to take it away – leaving it blocking his front room.Tony Harding, who is 79 and unable to move the heavy item, says Amazon effectively abandoned the giant box in his and his wife’s Winterbourne home, apparently expecting him to dispose of the brand new exercise bike himself. Despite asking both the driver who brought the item, and a second driver who delivered the order he had been expecting, neither would take away the £149 machine. Customer services told him it was highly unlikely the company would come to retrieve the fitness bike, and he would have to dispose of it. Continue reading...

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has dropped Don’t Doubt Ur Vibe on Soundcloud – a wannabe dancefloor banger that somehow manages to doubt its own vibeLike Charles Foster Kane splashing his millions on promoting his mistress’s disastrous opera career, very rich men have, in recent years, displayed a certain tendency to come to grief when dabbling in the field of music. First, the now-incarcerated pharma bro Martin Shkreli bought the only extant copy of the Wu-Tang Clan’s album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin and, as a result, was first called “a shithead”, “the Michael Jackson nose kid”, “the man with the 12-year-old body” and “a fake super-villain” by the group’s Ghostface Killah, and then became the subject of a Wu-Tang Clan diss track. Not, one suspects, the response he expected when he ponied up $2m for their CD. Now Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk – net worth $34.4bn – has launched a parallel career as an EDM artist, posting a track called Don’t Doubt Ur Vibe on Soundcloud. Continue reading...

The government is showing signs of legalising electric scooters on roads, but new laws should be about safety, not horsepowerIf there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that being hit by a scooter hurts less than being hit by a bike. That may sound like a strangely negative place to start, but it’s sort of fundamental to why I’m glad the government is finally showing signs of legalising the use of electronic scooters on public roads across the UK.The current state of the law is a mess. Its broad strokes are reasonable enough: powered vehicles require an MOT and registration to use on public roads, while unpowered vehicles do not. Pavements are for foot traffic only. Access requirements complicate matters, but only a little: wheelchairs, both manual and powered – legally, “class three invalid carriages” – can go on pavements, while some – class four – can go on roads as well. Continue reading...

Amazon founder interviewed as FBI conducts inquiry into Israeli firm linked to malwareJeff Bezos met federal investigators in April 2019 after they received information about the alleged hack of the billionaire’s mobile phone by Saudi Arabia, the Guardian has been told.Bezos was interviewed by investigators at a time when the FBI was conducting an investigation into the Israeli technology company NSO Group, according to a person who was present at the meeting. Continue reading...

In The Sims, if you get a job, buy a house and earn more money then happiness will follow. It’s a beguiling capitalist fantasyLike many girls of my generation, I first played The Sims at a sleepover. It was at my friend Hannah’s house; three 11-year-olds huddled in front of her dad’s bulky old computer monitor at midnight, gazing into a miniature house populated by tiny people going about their inexplicably compelling daily business. We took turns sending them to work, changing the wallpaper, and ordering them to put dirty dishes in the dishwasher instead of leaving them to gather flies. We bought them a little telly, a nice couch, a blender, paging covetously through the game’s furniture catalogue. With a thrill, we discovered we could make Sims “smooch” (though we were disappointed to learn that they couldn’t actually bone down – that wouldn’t happen until The Sims 2). Before we knew it, it was 3am.Almost everyone has played The Sims. With four main instalments, countless add-ons and spin-offs, and more than 200m sales worldwide, it is equalled perhaps only by Tetris in its universality. One thing creator Will Wright realised very early on was that the game was appealing to a large female audience. Whereas in the past “a large female audience” meant maybe 5% of the user base, with The Sims, women were the majority. A friend’s mother played so much Sims that she forgot to clean the actual house for weeks. Continue reading...

After a few years, I came to understand Instagram dwellers as broken people – my people. By Dayna TortoriciI had reached the point of diminishing returns. I wanted to quit Twitter, but my fingers were as if possessed, typing command+n, tw, enter at any lull in the workday, letting autofill take care of the rest. Like an old woman who finds herself at a familiar bus stop in her nightgown, I would blink at the new window and wonder how I got there and where I had intended to go. More than once I asked a friend to change my password and lock me out of my account. Weeks would go by without incident, sometimes months, but then a protest would break out, or my hometown would be on fire, and the old media was too slow with the news. I would go through the password retrieval process, log on, catch up, lose my mind and repeat the process.Finally, in July 2018, I thought: I’m going to have a heart attack if I stay on here. Continue reading...

Simeon Gilding says Britain relying on ‘flawed and outdated’ cybersecurity modelBritain has done the wrong thing in allowing Huawei to supply it with 5G equipment because China cannot be prevented from exploiting the technology for mass surveillance, according to a senior former Australian spy.Simeon Gilding, a director of the Australian Signals Directorate until December, said his country’s intelligence agency was unable to design cybersecurity controls that could prevent China from gaining backdoor access to Huawei. Continue reading...

Tag Suggest feature broke rules by storing facial recognition imagery without permission from usersFacebook has settled a lawsuit over facial recognition technology, agreeing to pay $550m (£419m) over accusations it had broken an Illinois state law regulating the use of biometric details.The settlement was quietly disclosed in the company’s quarterly results, released on Wednesday evening, which showed record revenues overall at the company, but also surging costs. Continue reading...

Shares drop 7% after hours despite fourth-quarter earnings report showing $21bn in revenueFacebook’s stocks stumbled on Wednesday afternoon after it posted fourth-quarter earnings, suggesting continuing scandals and regulatory roadblocks may finally be catching up with the social media giant.Shares fell 7% in after hours trading despite a reported $21bn in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2019, higher than the $20.89bn forecast. The average revenue per user reported by Facebook was $8.52, higher than the $8.38 forecast. Continue reading...

Company made profit of $105m in last quarter of 2019 on revenues of $7.38bn, both better than expectedTesla’s share price rose sharply in late trading on Wednesday as the company announced another profit and said it would sell more than half a million cars this year.Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company made a profit of $105m in the last quarter of 2019 on revenues of $7.38bn, both were better than expected and sent Tesla’s share close to 7% higher in after-hours trading. Continue reading...

Electronic Frontier Foundation report finds Android app shares names, IP addresses and other data with third partiesAmazon’s smart doorbell company Ring may be using its app to surveil users, a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation revealed on Wednesday.The “Ring for Android” app shares user data including names, private IP addresses, mobile network carriers and sensor data with a number of third-party trackers, the investigation found. At least four analytics and marketing companies receive such information from customer devices. Continue reading...

China, an important market for Apple products and critical part of its supply chain, has been rocked by the outbreakSales of the iPhone 11 propelled Apple to all-time record revenues and profits for the final three months of 2019, a strong performance that comes amid concerns over the impact of the coronavirus on the Chinese economy.Apple’s $91.8bn in quarterly revenue topped analyst expectations thanks to $56bn in iPhone sales. The strong performance marks a rebound for the company, which suffered a rare setback in holiday sales one year ago. Continue reading...

Orange Tree, London

US sources say special relationship too important to jeopardise over Chinese tech firm

State department investigates after New York Times journalist Ben Hubbard says his phone was targeted in 2018A New York Times reporter was allegedly targeted with spyware linked to Saudi Arabia in 2018, at a time when the kingdom was targeting several Saudi dissidents around the world.A new report by Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School found that Ben Hubbard, who has written a book about Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, was targeted by spyware known as “Pegasus”, which is made by Israel’s NSO Group. Continue reading...

Excluding firm that was integral to 3G and 4G networks would have been costly

Ukie, the sector’s trade body, says there are hubs in more than 20 towns and cities nationwideMore than half of the Britain’s video games industry is based outside London and the south-east, according to a report from the sector’s trade body, with gaming directly contributing more than £1.35bn to the UK economy.The report reveals that the UK gaming industry employs more than 16,000 people. Ukie, the trade body that produced the report, argues that this makes the sector the most productive of all of the nation’s creative industries, with each individual employee contributing more than £80,000 to the national economy. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson strikes balance between security concerns and the need for a fast rollout of 5G

Former senior government figures voice security fears as PM chairs meeting of NSCFormer ministers have sounded their final warnings to Boris Johnson about the Chinese telecoms firm Huawei ahead of his expected decision on whether it will play a part in the UK’s 5G network.The prime minister will chair a meeting of the national security council (NSC) later on Tuesday before making a judgment on the firm’s future in the country after months of concern around security, including from the US president, Donald Trump. Continue reading...

Employees ‘needed to stand up for what’s right’ despite policy barring workers from speaking about business

PM says solution will allow technological progress but not jeopardise US relationshipBoris Johnson has signalled that he wants Huawei to be deployed in British 5G mobile networks in defiance of US objections and widespread concern from party colleagues that doing so would create a long-term surveillance risk.The prime minister said he would unveil a compromise plan to restrict the Chinese company’s role in 5G, although it has to be accepted by senior cabinet ministers at a crunch meeting of the national security council (NSC) on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson has hinted he will arrive at a solution over whether to let the Chinese company build parts of the UK’s 5G network. The US has warned that it will compromise intelligence-sharing. The prime minister is expected to come down in favour of allowing Huawei to build 'non-core' parts of the network, which is the advice of Britain’s security advisers

US has been lobbying hard against Chinese firm but has yet to give UK a good enough reason to change stanceBoris Johnson is expected to meet members of the national security council on Tuesday to decide whether the Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei should be allowed to supply equipment for the UK’s 5G mobile phone networks.Intelligence services and armed forces chiefs will be on hand to give advice, but the final decision will be taken by a core group of politicians including Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, Priti Patel, the home secretary, and the defence secretary, Ben Wallace. Continue reading...

They tell us when someone has called, texted and WhatsApped us - even to drink water and exercise. Is it time to turn them all off for good?Three years ago, Aishah Iqbal had just qualified as a doctor and was finding it a “steep learning curve”. She often felt overwhelmed at work – and whenever she took out her phone and saw “all these messages coming up”, she felt worse. “It was very easy to get distracted from why I’d pulled my phone out, or to feel like there were so many people that I needed to reply to immediately.”When we talk about the fragmenting effect of technology on our attention, or the dopamine hits that keep us refreshing our feeds as if they are buttons on fruit machines, we are often thinking about notifications: the pings, pop-ups and glowing red dots that pull us back into our phones, and push us from app to app. Continue reading...

Since 1996, the Pokémon games have exerted a fascination for fans, telling imaginative stories and encouraging a generation of players to question everything they see“This is it? This is the game?”I am in Italy with my partner, and just like every beach holiday since 1999, I have booted up Pokémon. This particular version is Pokémon Sun for the Nintendo 3DS, but all the games are fundamentally the same: you’re a child leaving home to catch and train tiny monsters so you can defeat various bosses and bad guys. My boyfriend, who has never played Pokémon, has just watched me eviscerate a grunt trainer with my level 41 Mudsdale. Continue reading...

Mike Pompeo makes last-minute plea to ministers ahead of ‘momentous’ decisionBritain’s sovereignty will be in jeopardy if the UK allows Huawei to develop its 5G infrastructure, the US secretary of state has warned.In a last-minute plea to senior ministers, who are expected to decide on Tuesday whether to use the Chinese company, Mike Pompeo described the decision facing Britain’s national security council as “momentous”. Continue reading...

This closely observed account of everyday life in the tech capital reminds us to be wary of all those boy geniusesI sometimes wonder, having studied engineering at university, whether I should have headed for California to pan for digital gold, working as a coder for one of Silicon Valley’s tech giants or trying my luck at an overvalued startup with employee share options. Anna Wiener’s book is a reassuring reminder that, had I gone, I probably would have hated it.Uncanny Valley is a memoir with few revelations for those who have had contact with the technology industry. Even people familiar with it only through media coverage will already recognise Silicon Valley as a world of young men (and it has to be said, a few women) who have had their egos massaged perhaps a little too hard and a little too long. Their stories of failure and greed, sexual harassment and bullying, toxic cultures fomented by bloated valuations of firms that turn out to be built on thin air, have become our generation’s cautionary tales. And that’s to say nothing of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Continue reading...

As researchers confirm that stress can turn you grey, we look at the other scientific factors that could salt-and-pepper your crowning gloryThis week, scientists from Harvard demonstrated that stress can accelerate the greying of human hair. The researchers found that stress prompts the production of a hormone that affects the melanocyte cells involved in making hair pigments. The scientists hope that this discovery will add to the understanding of how the depletion of stem cells contributes to ageing in general. Continue reading...

Clearview AI may be controversial but it’s not the first business to identify you from your online picsWay back in May 2011, Eric Schmidt, who was then the executive chairman of Google, said that the rapid development of facial recognition technology had been one of the things that had surprised him most in a long career as a computer scientist. But its “surprising accuracy” was “very concerning”. Questioned about this, he said that a database using facial recognition technology was unlikely to be a service that the company would create, but went on to say that “some company … is going to cross that line”.As it happens, Dr Schmidt was being economical with the actualité, as the MP Alan Clark used to say. He must surely have known that a few months earlier Facebook had announced that it was using facial recognition in the US to suggest names while tagging photos. And some time after Schmidt spoke, Google itself launched a facial recognition feature in its own ill-fated social network, Google+. It was called Find My Face and it scanned photos from users and their friends to identify recognisable faces. Four years later, as the tech analyst Ben Thompson points out, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud released face-recognition APIs, followed by Amazon Web Services with its Rekognition service in 2016. So it turns out that lots of companies – including Schmidt’s own – had crossed the facial recognition red line. Continue reading...

The entrepreneur and futurologist says the rapid pace of technology should fill us with optimism not fearPeter Diamandis is best known as the founder of the XPrize Foundation, which offers big cash prizes as an incentive for tech solutions to big problems. The entrepreneur and investor is also co-founder of the Singularity University, a Silicon Valley-based nonprofit offering education in futurology. His new book, The Future Is Faster Than You Think, argues that the already rapid pace of technological innovation is about to get a whole lot quicker.Do you think people are worried about where technology is going to take us?

US discusses concerns over Chinese telecoms giant’s role in Britain’s future 5G networkDonald Trump discussed the security of telecommunications networks with Boris Johnson, the White House said, as Britain closes in on a decision on Huawei’s role in the country’s future 5G network.The US administration told allies not to allow the Chinese tech giant to form part of such networks, claiming it would be a security risk – a claim that Huawei vehemently denies. Continue reading...

Moderators required to sign form before accepting a job with subcontractor Accenture, according to report from the VergeContent moderators for YouTube have received legal warnings the job may negatively affect their mental health and cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a new report from the Verge found.Social media sites are increasingly informing employees of the negative effects of moderation jobs following several reports on harrowing working conditions, including long hours viewing violent and sexually exploitative content with little mental health support. Before accepting a job with Accenture, a subcontractor that works with several social media companies and manages some YouTube moderators at a Texas facility, employees had to sign a form titled “Acknowledgement”, the Verge reported. Continue reading...

Julian Lewis MP responds to criticism over his refusal to use email for constituency correspondence, and says letters, phone calls and surgery appointments are ‘perfectly adequate’There is nothing “mysterious” about the fact that I do not use email for constituency correspondence: it is openly stated on the homepage of my – very extensive – website, and has been remarked upon in the press from time to time previously. Nor am I in the least “uncontactable”, as Bridget Craig (Letters, 23 January) knows perfectly well, having corresponded with me by letter without difficulty.Letters, phone calls, and, where appropriate, surgery appointments are perfectly adequate for people who genuinely need my help, as the many letters of thanks quoted on my website fully confirm. Only mass, manipulative campaigners and obsessive individuals find this a problem – and so they should! Continue reading...

Boss says firm is working to ensure older and newer products can be used together

The controversial technology is developing rapidly and its use spreading more widely

Civil liberties groups condemn move as ‘a breathtaking assault on our rights’

About 50m metric tons of e-waste are generated annually. But Apple says efforts to regulate mobile devices to reduce waste stifle ‘innovation’Do all cables matter?I found myself asking this deeply cursed question as I read a report commissioned by Apple on the European commission’s plan to require mobile device makers to adopt a standard charger. The report runs 92-pages, features a cover photo of the three types of charging ports (USB-C, Micro-USB, and Lightning) nestled lovingly together like mama, papa and baby bear, and is titled United in Diversity. Continue reading...

A day’s battery, solid performance and watch-first design makes Wear OS a much more attractive optionThe Fossil Gen 5 is easily the best Wear OS smartwatch you can buy at the moment, and as long as you don’t expect it to be an Apple Watch-beater, it gets the job done and looks the part.Smartwatches that run Google’s Wear OS software have come in many different designs from various different manufacturers, and work with both Android and the iPhone. But they have long been plagued by sluggishness, poor battery life and a software experience that is behind the competition. Continue reading...

Switch; Atlus/Nintendo

Margrethe Vestager says EU will also tax tech firms who ‘create value but do not pay taxes’The European Union’s leading tech regulator has thrown her weight behind the British government’s plans to press ahead with a digital tax despite threats from Donald Trump.Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition commissioner recently promoted to take charge of Europe’s digital policy as well, said she was a “strong supporter” of national digital taxes in order to advance the chances of an international agreement. She said the EU would revive plans for a digital tax within a year if international efforts to find a solution failed. Continue reading...

Speakers and networks will miss out on security fixes and eventually stop workingSpeaker company Sonos will cut off its most loyal customers from future software updates entirely unless they replace their old equipment for newer models, it has announced.The policy is unusual even within the novelty-obsessed technology industry, for the scope of the impact: customers who have a range of Sonos products, including the Connect, Bridge and first-generation Play:5 speakers, will not only never be able to update those devices but will also be blocked from updating any newer device that is connected to them. Continue reading...

Downing Street signals it is not affordable to exclude Chinese company from networkBritain is preparing to defy Washington and allow Huawei to supply 5G equipment, although the US is expected to mount a last-ditch campaign arguing the Chinese technology still poses a serious security risk.Downing Street signalled on Thursday that it believed Huawei kit was necessary to ensure that the 5G mobile network was affordable. It is expected, however, to agree fresh restrictions on the company at a ministerial meeting next week. Continue reading...

Automation is a red herring. The wider environment of slowing growth explains low labor demand largely by itselfAn army of robots now scrub floors, grow microgreens and flip burgers. Due to advances in artificial intelligence, computers will supposedly take over much more of the service sector in the coming decade, including jobs in law, finance and medicine that require years of education and training.Related: Republicans have turned the impeachment trial into a dangerous sham | Andrew Gawthorpe Continue reading...

Richard wants a laptop for its flatter keys, but desktop PCs can have any keyboard typeI plan to get a new computer for home use, no games. I would rather have a desktop/tower, if it was possible to get a more sensitive keyboard, but I have Parkinson’s and find that the keys are way too hard to use because they require a deeper push than laptop keyboards. Your earlier suggestion of getting an external monitor for a laptop sounds like a winner. How is the connection made? RichardThe short answer is that you should buy a desktop PC. With a laptop, you are more or less stuck with the keyboard fitted by the manufacturer, and the quality varies from average to mediocre. With a desktop PC, you can take your pick from dozens of USB and Bluetooth keyboards. These range from keyboards with flat, island-style isolated keys to full mechanical keyboards aimed at professionals and gamers. Continue reading...

With their long, complex stories, video games fit television better than film – especially now streaming services have the firepower to make such projectsIt is a truth, universally accepted, that video games do not translate well to the big screen. From Assassin’s Creed to the Super Mario Bros movie, the result is usually a compromised monstrosity, ignorant of the source material and quickly disowned by the studios, directors and actors responsible for it. There have been exceptions – Detective Pikachu was weird but fine and the Resident Evil films have their fans. But films based on games are usually a mess. Have licensing managers been looking at the wrong screen the whole time?This week, Netflix released viewing figures that showed its fantasy monster-hunting series The Witcher is on course to be the platform’s biggest-ever opening season, viewed by more than 76m households. There are question marks over how the company is now gathering its data (Netflix considers a view to have occurred when anyone watches for more than two minutes – it used to be 70% of the show). But even with such provisos in mind, The Witcher has been a success, performing well against veteran series such as The Crown (73m households). Continue reading...

Information suggests alleged targeting of Amazon chief was part of a wider campaign to pick off individuals close to KhashoggiThe message, it seems, could not have been clearer.On 8 November 2018, just one month after the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, received an unsolicited text from Mohammed bin Salman’s WhatsApp account. Continue reading...