From online GPs and home working to smartphone tracking, the speed at which we are embracing technology is unprecedented – but can we trust it?Pandemics – as the historian Yuval Noah Harari has observed – press the fast-forward button on history. Suddenly, changes that would in pre-corona times have generated years of debate, dissent, hesitation, opposition and delay turn out to be possible overnight.Exhibit A in this context is the way in which hundreds of thousands of white-collar workers are suddenly able – indeed, required – to work from home. Continue reading...

Stuart Robert says people can be assured there will be no geolocation, surveillance or tracking

Rajesh Jayaseelan ‘starved’, friend says, because he feared landlord learning he was ill

Tech firms place limitations on how tracing apps may work in effort to protect users’ privacy

Users who have liked, shared or commented on posts with false claims will be directed to WHO’s ‘myth busters’ page

Court said firm not doing enough to protect staff and told it to stop selling non-essentials

Konami

Escape the lockdown by losing yourself in the stunning virtual landscapes of walking simulator gamesWith the pandemic keeping everyone inside just as spring brings good weather and longer days, many of us are missing simply wandering outdoors. Fortunately, there are video games offering beautiful landscapes where you can lose yourself in (virtual) nature. You’re in good company if you do – as film and media professor Alenda Chang points out in her book, Playing Nature: “For many people, the hours spent in game environments vastly outnumber those spent in wilderness areas”, even without a public health crisis.Replaying favourite games for comfort is a trend now, and some are revisiting recent open-world adventures, such as Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn, and even Far Cry 5 with the guns put away. But these blockbuster action games tend to feature enemies —not ideal if all you want is a peaceful ramble around a beautiful place. Continue reading...

The drug has been used to treat a number of diseases in the past half-century but after a French study claimed it was effective against coronavirus it has been hailed by the US president as a cure. But there is scant evidence it is effective – and it could actually be harmfulAt one of his recent daily press briefings, Donald Trump told his global television audience he was hearing great things about the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine for treating coronavirus. “I think it could be, based on what I see, it could be a game changer,” he said.But despite big claims for the drug in a small study in France, the evidence for hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19 is scant – and certainly far from reliable enough to put into widespread use. So how did Trump come to recommend it to the extent that he declared: “What do you have to lose?” Continue reading...

Shares reach record high, pushing fortune of CEO and founder Jeff Bezos to $138bn

Bezos owns 11% stake in Amazon, which has seen surge in demand with households on virtual lockdown

Second-generation iPhone SE resembles older models, with prices starting at £419Apple has launched a cheaper version of its iPhone SE as it attempts to continue normal business despite the coronavirus pandemic.The second-generation SE resembles Apple’s previous design used for its smartphones between 2014 and 2017, complete with the traditional touch ID home button instead of face recognition. It costs from £419 in the UK and $399 in the US. Continue reading...

The role of the digital revolutionaries is to disrupt everything but the central institution of modern life: the market

The writer-director’s comedies – from Office Space to Silicon Valley – always sum up the spirit of their times. So why has he made an LSD-soaked cartoon about George Clinton and Bootsy Collins?Few writer-directors have been as consistent and ruthless at capturing the moment as Mike Judge, although he never actually intends to do so. “It’s always a shock when something comes out and it feels so relevant,” he says, in his laconic surfer-dude tone, talking to me by phone from his home in Los Angeles. “But I tend to look at stuff that feels as if it’s everywhere, but nobody’s talking about.”Judge, 57, is so beady at spotting what’s everywhere, his shows themselves end up becoming ubiquitous, the thing everybody’s talking about. It is impossible to imagine 90s TV without his seminal hits, Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill, the former satirising the worst of youth culture, the latter fondly depicting gentle American conservatism acclimatising itself to the Bill Clinton era. Continue reading...

Participants ‘folding proteins’ on home PCs, a task that could prove instrumental in tackling disease

Good sound, battery and noise cancelling, with attractive design and Apple’s H1 chip with Siri and cross-device connectivityApple-owned Beats is moving into the on-ear noise-cancelling world with the Solo Pro, using the same chips that make the PowerBeats Pro and AirPods so good.The £269.95 Beats Solo Pro blends the design of the firm’s existing Solo with the wired EP headphones for an attractive, modern and fairly sleek design. Continue reading...

Unrepairable phones and laptops are one of the scandals of our throwaway society. But the pushback is building – and the coronavirus crisis has added more pressure for change‘Imagine you showed someone a smartphone 20 years ago. You said: ‘Here’s this thing, it’s going to be awesome, and it’ll cost $1,000. But the manufacturers are going to glue the battery in, and you’re supposed to get rid of it when the battery wears out.’ You would have thought that notion was completely bananas.”Nathan Proctor is talking via Google Hangouts from Boston, Massachusetts, about an allegedly central feature of modern manufacturing known as planned obsolescence. This is the idea that some of the world’s biggest companies have been selling us products either knowing full well that they will only last a couple of years, or having deliberately built a short lifespan into the itemor its software. Continue reading...

User experience designers Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa say they lost their jobs after circulating a petition about Covid-19 risksAmazon has fired two employees after they publicly denounced the company’s treatment of warehouse workers during the coronavirus pandemic.The user experience designers Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa said on Tuesday they had been fired after internally circulating a petition about health risks for Amazon warehouse workers during the Covid-19 crisis. Costa had worked at the company for more than 15 years and Cunningham had been an employee for more than five. Continue reading...

The ITV presenter says that to suggest a connection between Covid-19 and 5G ‘would be wrong and could be dangerous’This Morning’s Eamonn Holmes has said he does not believe in conspiracy theories linking the roll-out of 5G mobile phone networks to coronavirus, while still insisting that “many people are rightly concerned and are looking for answers”.Media regulator Ofcom is investigating the ITV daytime show as a priority following hundreds of complaints that Holmes appeared to suggest people should not rush to dismiss a potential link between the pandemic and new technology. NHS officials have repeatedly made clear there is no connection, in line with global scientific consensus. Continue reading...

With families and couples filming themselves dancing or performing skits, the app has become even more popular in recent weeks. I asked its British stars to help me get startedAndy Warhol predicted a time everyone would have 15 minutes of fame. He was nearly right – it is actually 15 seconds. That is the maximum duration of a video clip with music (non-music clips can last up to a minute) on TikTok, the video-sharing platform that has taken the world by storm. Favoured by under-25s, who make up its core audience, TikTok this year surpassed Facebook and WhatsApp as the world’s most downloaded non-gaming app.TikTok’s content doesn’t take itself too seriously, and ranges from food to fashion, pranks to pets – as well as the ubiquitous dance challenges. It is a perfect fit, in other words, for the lockdown, when many of us are stuck inside and in desperate need of some silly fun. This may be why, even if you haven’t downloaded it, you suddenly find, clogging up your social media, clips of Justin Bieber dancing to I’m a Savage by Megan Thee Stallion, or Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez swapping outfits to Drake’s Flip the Switch. It seems everyone from doctors and nurses in PPE to bemused parents quarantined with teenagers are flocking to the app – and sometimes going viral in the process. Continue reading...

Retailer says it wants to ‘keep as many people as possible working during coronavirus crisis’

ITV host said ‘it’s very easy to say it is not true because it suits the state narrative’

Exclusive: draft plans for contact-tracing app said device IDs could be used to identify users

Health secretary Matt Hancock rebuts concerns about privacy

Jack Schofield and I struck up a correspondence back in the early days of computing in the UK as he used the email system run by the company I worked for, Apricot Computers.Jack’s email ID was simply JET045, this being long before the world wide web. Working in R&D I was responsible for part of this system and we often exchanged notes about technology and the way it was covered, often very perceptively, sometimes naively, by Jack and his fellow journalists. Continue reading...

“There were no design conventions for the earliest home computers, no rules for how they’d look,” says Alex Wiltshire, author of Home Computers, a new book that explores the rapidly changing face of the household machine between its birth in the 1970s and the 1990s.A world away from the devices used today, the computers in the book illustrate the rapid march of technology.Home Computers is published on 16 April by Thames & Hudson (£24.95)

Monitoring the pandemic with personal technology is a thorny issue. We can get results without having our privacy on parade

From being a goose on the loose to controlling whole galaxies, here’s a world of experiences for all the family

North Holland thinks unproven 600mph magnetic hovertrain could help replace air travelSwifter than trains, safer than cars and far less damaging to the environment than planes, the Dutch province of North Holland believes the hyperloop might be the future.Plans are being drawn up for Amsterdam to be connected to other European cities by the futuristic high-speed mode of transportation comprising a magnetic hovertrain in an air-free tube able to travel at speeds of over 600mph due to the lack of friction and drag. Continue reading...

The global sporting calendar may be empty, but games such as Fifa 20 and AO Tennis let you set up a cup competition in your living roomEuro 2020 postponed, Wimbledon cancelled, baseball’s opening day delayed: the coronavirus pandemic has decimated the sporting calendar. Fortunately, if you’re missing the competitive zeal of live sports, multiplayer games such as Fifa 20 enable fans to create their own tournaments – providing both distraction therapy, and the chance to beat your sister to the Premier League title. Here are five recommended multiplayer sports sims, and how to set them up for fierce, sofa-based competition. Continue reading...

Critics say efforts are too little, too late as research reveals vast majority of false claims appear online

Expensive PC-replacement tablet gains improved cameras, lidar and full mouse support, but it’s the software that’s kingThe 2020 iPad Pro takes 2018’s wow-factor redesign and beefs up the camera on the back with lidar (light and radar) technology, commonly used in self-driving cars, not tablet computers.Apple re-invented the iPad Pro in 2018 with a stunning design featuring large, beautiful screens with thin bezels, Face ID instead of a Touch ID home button, and squared-off sides. Continue reading...

Only key workers will be able to book stays via accommodation website amid coronavirus crisis

Striking a perfect balance between friction and flow, could this battle royale hit be the perfect shooter game?That’s it. I have now played Apex Legends for over 500 hours. The online multiplayer shooter, developed by Californian studio Respawn Entertainment and released in February 2019, has been my obsession all year, seeing off a variety of pretenders from Doom Eternal to Animal Crossing: New Horizons.To the casual observer, there’s nothing remarkable about it. Set in a science-fiction universe tied to Respawn’s successful Titanfall series, it is another title in the battle royale genre alongside the Goliath that is Fortnite, as well as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Call of Duty: Warzone. You land in a hi-tech future landscape with two team-mates and then you scramble about, finding weapons, while 19 other teams try to kill you and everyone else. The last team left alive is the winner. Continue reading...

From FaceTime to Houseparty, there is no shortage of platforms for work and play as you shelter in placeWith offices and schools around the world temporarily shut amid the coronavirus crisis, the video platform Zoom has seen overnight success. But growing concerns over security across the platform have many consumers wondering about tech alternatives.Privacy-minded consumers should consider video chat options carefully, said Arvind Narayanan, an associate computer science professor at Princeton University who has been outspoken about the security concerns surrounding Zoom. Continue reading...

Company investigating after Cloud Platform problem causes email delivery failuresA brief outage on Google’s Cloud Platform led to failures at Gmail, Snapchat and the smart home company Nest on Wednesday afternoon.The failure, which began at 3.35pm BST, affected a number of tools that Google uses internally and provides to other companies to host web services. Continue reading...

Study suggests mainstream news outlets struggling to compete with celebrities’ and politicians’ reach

PS4; Square Enix

American Jack Dorsey putting $1bn into the funding of ‘global Covid-19 relief’

Followup to the DualShock controller adds haptic feedback, adaptive triggers and a built-in micSony has revealed the new controller for its forthcoming PlayStation 5 console. Named DualSense, the pad is a major departure from the DualShock series in design terms, with a two-tone body and chunkier form-factor breaking away from the slimmer look of the past two decades.The key new addition is haptic feedback – replacing the rumble feature of previous controllers– providing levels of resistance to player movement by simulating, for example, the slow grittiness of driving through mud in an offroad racing game. The two triggers will also feature adaptive feedback in the trigger buttons, so players can feel the tension and release when, say, firing an arrow from a bow. Continue reading...

Workers at facilities where there had been at least one coronavirus case said they were not being closed for deep cleaning

Company paid more than £1bn in wages but only £44m in UK corporation taxGoogle’s UK staff earned an average of £234,000 each last year as the tech firm paid more than £1bn in wages and a share scheme – but only £44m in UK corporation tax.Google, which increased UK staff numbers by almost 800 to 4,439 last year, footed its first £1bn-plus wage and salary bill for the year to the end of June. The £1.04bn total was a 25% increase on the £829m paid to staff in 2018, according to the company’s latest financial filings in Britain. Continue reading...

Restrictions on frequently forwarded messages intended to disrupt false Covid-19 claims

Updated processors, a price drop and an excellent new keyboard only add to this fantastic traditional laptopApple’s latest MacBook Air has a new, fixed and more satisfying keyboard, improved processors and gets a price drop.From the outside essentially nothing has changed. The new 2020 MacBook Air looks just like the revamped machine launched in 2018, except it costs £200 less than its predecessor, with the base model starting at £999. Continue reading...

A software developer’s epiphany inspires this admirable critique of capitalism, starting with the west coast tech tyrantsA month ago, when I began reading Wendy Liu’s polemic, I felt inclined to dismiss her as a millennial flibbertigibbet, motivated by a grudge against an industry that seemingly had no use for her. Liu grew up as a computing whiz-kid in Montreal and moved to San Francisco to develop software that aspired, a little tackily, to be “Tinder for advertisers”. When her entrepreneurial scheme fizzled out she transferred to the London School of Economics to study inequality, which turned her into an evangelising radical. In her book, she attacks the depressing doctrine of “capitalist realism” and its assumption that our current social and economic arrangements are unchangeable; with born-again zeal, she chastises her own “petty and narcissistic” nature and even laments “the tragedy of the human condition”. A bit excessive, surely, as a response to the failure of a startup?But as I read on, everything changed. We now have good reason to question the pursuits of the vaunted innovators with whom Liu consorted in California – the blissed-out cultists at Google, whose only worry is over “the wrong kind of sparkling water in the microkitchens”, or the manic experts who specialise in “envisioning hyperplanes in n-dimensional space”. As Liu came to see, techies like these were already living extraterrestrially, having opted out of the earthly, bodily necessities that currently weigh us down. A colleague of hers said he would happily volunteer to join Elon Musk’s projected colony on Mars, the “backup” planet for menaced humanity. “You know you can never come back,” warned another of Liu’s friends. “I’d work remotely,” grinned the would-be Martian. Continue reading...

Perfect storm of conditions helped nonsense theories about 5G and coronavirus to take holdA year ago, hoax theories about the dangers of 5G had barely pierced the public’s consciousness, largely remaining confined to serious conspiracy theorists such as David Icke.In recent weeks, baseless claims about risks associated with the next-generation mobile technology have gone mainstream. Claims linking 5G to the coronavirus pandemic have led to petrol bomb attacks on phone masts and rebuttals from the government. Continue reading...

Behaviour of some property owners labelled ‘incredibly irresponsible and dangerous’

Industry body assures people in open letter there is no link between 5G and pandemic

Airbnb created an industry and changed the face of many neighbourhoods. Now it’s facing the challenge of the coronavirusAirbnb was built on the premise of bringing the world closer together. Tourists could travel like locals, while locals could cash in on their desirable neighbourhood properties by letting those visitors in. Last year the company was estimated to be worth more than US$30bn. It is scheduled to go public in 2020. Then came the Covid-19 pandemic.Travel is suspended. Australians are almost entirely confined to their homes. Now the once heralded disruptor is seeing a collapse in bookings. The hosts who have become reliant on income-generating properties to pay their bills are being bled dry by a lack of business, and already-suspicious neighbours are up in arms over the potential that short-term renters may spread the virus. Continue reading...