by Molly Blackall and Guardian community team on (#4W4NM)
Have you ever had an accident because of your smartphone? Whether funny or serious, we’d like to hear from youPerhaps you have walked into a lamppost while scrolling on Instagram. Or dropped your phone on your nose while texting in bed. If so, you are not alone – a study shows that mobile-related injuries are increasing.The research, which analyses data from US emergency departments over 20 years, shows the number of accidents has soared in recent years. Continue reading...
by Michael McGowan, Christopher Knaus and Nick Eversh on (#4W4BH)
Exclusive: Israel-based group has gained access to at least 21 pages, using them to launch coordinated false stories to their 1 million followers around the world
Inventor of the first practical computer programming languageTony Brooker, who has died aged 94, was a pioneer of computer programming and education. He designed and implemented the world’s first high-level programming language, at Manchester University, and was later founding professor of computer science at Essex University.In 1947, when Brooker took up his first academic post, as assistant lecturer in engineering mathematics at Imperial College, University of London, computers were in the air. He joined Professor KD Tocher and another student, Sidney Michaelson, in building the Icce (Imperial College Computing Engine, pronounced “ickyâ€). In 1949 Brooker became a research assistant at the Cambridge University mathematical laboratory and took charge of its differential analyser, a prewar analogue computer. Continue reading...
Tesla CEO faces questions over whether ‘pedo guy’ tweet was defamatory and if he tried to take credit for Thai cave rescueDid Elon Musk “try to take credit in any way for the rescue operation†that saved 12 young Thai footballers and their coach from imminent death in the Tham Luang cave network last summer? Did he deserve any? And if he didn’t, who did?Those were the questions at the center of the billionaire’s second day of testimony in the defamation case brought by Vernon Unsworth, a British cave explorer, against the Tesla entrepreneur. Unsworth told the federal court in Los Angeles that Musk’s 15 July 2018 tweet calling him “pedo guy†made him feel “humiliated, ashamed, dirtyâ€. Continue reading...
Larry Page and Sergey Brin have handed over control of Alphabet to Sundar PichaiTwenty-one years after founding Google in a messy garage in Menlo Park, California, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have stepped down from day-to-day management of the company to assume the role of “proud parents – offering advice and love, but not daily nagging!â€Page and Brin’s decision to hand over control of Google, and its parent company Alphabet, to long-standing lieutenant Sundar Pichai is the end of an era for the search engine giant, which had been built in their image and followed their personal values. Continue reading...
Former moderator suing social network in Ireland over health impact of scouring websiteA former Facebook moderator is suing the company, alleging that his work scouring the site of violent and obscene content caused his post-traumatic stress disorder.Chris Gray, who now works as a tour guide, is seeking damages from both Facebook Ireland and CPL, the contracting firm that directly employed him. The case, filed on Wednesday in the Irish high court in Dublin, is thought to be the first time a former moderator has taken the social network to court. Continue reading...
by Rowena Mason Deputy political editor on (#4W2Y4)
PM signals he is preparing to shut Chinese firm out after lobbying from Donald TrumpBoris Johnson has cast doubt on whether the UK will allow Huawei to invest in its 5G network, suggesting it might “prejudice†the Five Eyes intelligence relationship, after Donald Trump applied pressure for other countries to adopt the US ban.In his strongest signal so far that he is preparing to shut Huawei out of the network, Johnson said that security concerns were paramount in the decision about the Chinese company. Continue reading...
Billionaire entrepreneur admits he ‘would say very little at all if I just said sense’When Elon Musk took the stand on Tuesday, the question was whether he defamed a British cave explorer by calling him a “pedo guyâ€, but at times it seemed the real issue was more fundamental – the fragility of male egos.“This is a case about insults between two men,†said Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, in his opening statement to the jury in a federal courthouse in Los Angeles on the first day of the trial. Continue reading...
LA court hears the billionaire testify in Vernon Unsworth’s lawsuit over comments after Thai cave rescueIt was a gripping tale of peril and prowess that captivated the world for more than two tense weeks in the summer of 2018. Twelve boys and their football coach were lost in a subterranean maze in the Tham Luong caves in Thailand. An international team of cave divers raced to rescue them before monsoon rains were due to flood the caves. The story was destined to be fodder for a Hollywood blockbuster – and that was before an eccentric billionaire got involved.On Tuesday, a postscript to the feelgood tale of the Tham Luang cave rescue played out in a federal courthouse in Los Angeles as the trial began in a defamation case brought by the British caver Vernon Unsworth against Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk. Continue reading...
Frequent critic of Kremlin interference in the UK was sent suspicious email from MoscowThe Labour candidate Ben Bradshaw has said he has been the victim of a suspected Russian cyber-attack after he received an email from Moscow with attachments containing sophisticated malware.Bradshaw – who has repeatedly raised the subject of Kremlin interference in British politics, including in the EU referendum – received the email at his election gmail address. The sender – “Andrei†– claimed he was a whistleblower from inside Vladimir Putin’s presidential administration. Continue reading...
The employee-activists accuse the company of attempting to quash employee organizing, in violation of federal labor lawsThe four worker-activists who were fired by Google during Thanksgiving week plan to file federal charges alleging that their former employer fired them to quash worker organizing, in violation of federal labor laws.Google told its staff of approximately 100,000 last week that the employees were fired for “clear and repeated violations of our data security policiesâ€, according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg. But in defiant interviews with the Guardian on Monday, the workers rejected that justification as a pretext. Continue reading...
Video-sharing site restricted posts by users it identified as disabled, fat or LGBTQ+TikTok has admitted censoring posts by users it identified as disabled, fat or LGBTQ+ as part of a misguided effort to cut down on bullying on the platform.According to a report from the German site NetzPolitik.org, the video-sharing site artificially limited the reach of users who it thought would be vulnerable to bullying if their videos reached a wide audience. Continue reading...
The firm’s overworked warehouse staff have had to pee in old water bottles while their CEO is paid in a second what they earn in five weeksJeff Bezos, says the TUC, earns as much in a second as one of his warehouse workers would earn in five weeks. It makes his performative philanthropy – such as his Bezos Day One charity, which helps families in low-income areas – slightly nauseating. If he hadn’t set Amazon up to maximise his power and overvalue his contribution, he wouldn’t have helped to create the disempowerment and exploitation he claims to want to overcome.Serf-like conditions for Amazon warehouse staff, the atmosphere of hyper-surveillance in which every motion is monitored to check that it’s fast enough, are piled on top of the low wages to ram home to each employee how dispensable they are. But then, think of the free delivery. Continue reading...
YouTube chief executive officer confirmed in interview there were ‘ads of Trump that were not approved to run on Google or YouTube’Google and YouTube have pulled hundreds of ads for Donald Trump over the last few months, according to 60 Minutes on CBS.Related: Trump heads to UK for Nato summit as impeachment deadline looms – live Continue reading...
European commission surveys companies about agreements they have made to share dataThe European commission is launching a new investigation into Google, examining the company’s data collection practices, according to a report from Reuters.During the past week, the competition commission has sent out questionnaires to companies that work with Google asking them about the agreements they have made to share data with the search firm. Continue reading...
Zuckerberg says ‘people should be able to judge for themselves the character of politicians’ and compares alternative to censorshipFacebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has defended the company’s decision to not take down political advertising that contains false information – and compared the alternative to censorship.Related: BBC tells Tories to take down Facebook ad featuring its presenters Continue reading...
Five days after director’s mob epic hits Netflix, Scorsese urges viewers to see it on as big a screen as possibleMartin Scorsese has implored audiences not to watch his films – or those by other directors – on their smartphones.Scorsese was speaking to the Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers in the wake of the Netflix streaming release of his latest film, The Irishman. Continue reading...
Company facing scrutiny over treatment of Li Hongyuan, who had demanded severance payThe Chinese telecom corporation Huawei has come under fire in its own country as members of the public rallied behind a former employee detained for eight months after demanding severance pay from the company.Last January, Li Hongyuan, a Huawei employee of 13 years, was arrested on extortion charges and detained until August, when he was released because of “unclear criminal facts and insufficient evidenceâ€, according to court documents posted online by Li. Continue reading...
Kickstarter funded a third instalment of this much-loved 80s murder mystery, but it’s not all middle-aged nostalgiaFor a moment in 1999, Shenmue represented the future of all video games. And in some ways, Sega’s grand murder mystery, set in late-80s Japan, has defined the medium. With a reported budget of $20m and a supporting battalion of artists, designers and programmers, it was the first game to show that video-game publishers could make financial wagers at Hollywood blockbuster-scale. Likewise, Shenmue’s star director, Yu Suzuki, then in his early 40s, laid a template that has defined the games that dominate today’s charts: a living virtual city filled with diversions and populated by AI-controlled characters that worked to daily routines; shops that opened to defined schedules; a world that strained at the seams of its technological circumstance.Still, while Shenmue came with a cinematic plot – you play as a young Japanese man, Ryo Hazuki, trying to disentangle the threads of his father’s murder – its slow-burn rhythm was almost art-house in pace. Suzuki later said his aim was to replicate not realism, but reality, with all of its periods of listlessness and boredom. As such, the game was filled with daily chores, repetitious part-time work, all the stuff that, ostensibly, people play video games to escape. The gamble did not pay off. Only two of the planned six instalments in the series were released. Grand Theft Auto 3’s arrival in 2001, with its cinematic set pieces and celebrity voice actors, changed the arc of video game design, probably inevitably. The market decided Shenmue’s vision of the future was too quirky, and consequently the murder of Ryo’s father went unresolved. Continue reading...
by Gwyn Topham Transport correspondent on (#4VWTE)
As the biggest ride-hailing app faces trouble over fake IDs, we test out its three main rivals, and find few can match taking the bus or tubeFor London, Uber is not yet over. But last week’s decision by the capital’s transport authority to reject the global ride-hailing firm’s application to renew its licence has put its long-term prospects in doubt.Two years ago, Uber promised to work with Transport for London (TfL) to become a better service provider, and can list many positive steps taken. Yet TfL still had doubts about its security processes – doubts confirmed by revelations that 14,000 journeys were undertaken by drivers who had faked their ID on the app. Now, to the delight of the vocal black-cab lobby, London has once more told Uber that is not fit to hold a private hire licence. Continue reading...
Tech executive declared plan to move temporarily in 2020 following a month-long visit to entrepreneurs on the continentTwitter chief Jack Dorsey said this week that he plans to move to Africa for up to six months next year. The tech executive announced the planned move following a month-long trip visiting entrepreneurs on the continent.“Sad to be leaving the continent … for now. Africa will define the future (especially the bitcoin one!),†Dorsey tweeted from Addis Ababa on Wednesday. “Not sure where yet, but I’ll be living here for 3-6 months mid 2020. Grateful I was able to experience a small part.†Continue reading...
Thousands of users complained about issues, citing problems with sharing posts and sending messagesFor many attempting to share Thanksgiving posts on Facebook on Thursday morning, it seemed the social network was not in the holiday mood.Thousands of users complained about issues with Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram, citing problems with sharing posts and sending messages, according to Down Detector, a website that tracks such outages. Continue reading...
Chinese-owned video sharing platform blocked Feroza Aziz after she posted film disguised as makeup tutorialTikTok has apologised for blocking a US teenager from the Chinese-owned video sharing platform after she posted a video highlighting Beijing’s treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang.A spokesman for the platform on Thursday blamed a “human moderation error†for the removal of a video by 17-year-old Feroza Aziz disguised as a makeup tutorial to avoid being censored. Continue reading...
Allen wants to set up a small company working from home, and would like some adviceI’m looking to set up a small business working from home, and would like some advice on back up and security measures. I have an Office 365 account so my main directory for saving documents will be OneDrive. I was looking to back up on a Synology NAS drive, perhaps to two separate hard drives as a precaution. Also, I currently just use Windows’ built-in security, but wondered whether I should look for something else.Initially, it would just be me, but if things go well then I may have another two or three people helping. I’m assuming I can just scale up any security measures as the need arises. AllenTechnology manufacturers cater to two very large markets with different needs: home users and businesses. You’re about to enter the SoHo (small office, home office) market where home technologies dominate because most single traders don’t need proper business systems with all the extra costs and complications involved. Continue reading...
Company has been criticised for handling of move it says will reduce risk from hackingTwitter has announced it is to clear out inactive accounts, freeing up dormant usernames and reducing the risk of old accounts being hacked.But the company is facing criticism for the way it has handled the announcement, with many concerned that the accounts of people who have died over the past decade will be removed with no way of saving their Twitter legacies. Continue reading...
‘Final straw’ was refusal to allow partner to mark dubious claims by far-right partiesFacebook’s only Dutch factchecker has quit over the social network’s refusal to allow them to highlight political lies as being false.The online newspaper Nu.nl had been Facebook’s only factchecking partner in the Netherlands since Leiden University dropped out of the programme last year. The website had sole responsibility for marking Facebook and Instagram news content for Dutch users as being false or misleading, in order to help power the social network’s tools that suppress distribution of misinformation. Continue reading...
Teenager claims video sharing platform is censoring her posts, which TikTok deniesAn American teenager who is using makeup tutorials on TikTok to spread awareness of China’s detention of at least a million Muslims in internment camps in Xinjiang has claimed her videos are being censored by the platform.In a three-part series that has gone viral on the international version of the Chinese short video-sharing platform, Feroza Aziz, 17, begins by appearing to show viewers how to use an eyelash curler. Continue reading...
Platform bars Red Ice TV and Affirmative Right, as VDare continues to operateFacebook will no longer allow Red Ice TV and Affirmative Right to use its platform, following a Guardian report on the continued presence of prominent white nationalist organizations on the site eight months after a promised ban.Related: Facebook's only Dutch factchecker quits over political ad exemption Continue reading...
Three other Google staffers were reportedly fired on Monday, prompting accusations of retaliationOn Friday, about 200 employees rallied outside Google’s office in San Francisco to demand that two suspended worker activists be reinstated. By Monday, at least one of the suspended workers said she had been fired, with reports that three other Google staffers had also been let go.Rebecca Rivers, a software engineer at Google who had been involved with internal protests against Google’s work with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), announced her firing on Twitter on Monday afternoon. Three other Google staffers were also fired on Monday, according to an internal company memo obtained by Bloomberg. Continue reading...
by Gwyn Topham Transport correspondent on (#4VMF8)
Ride-hailing service to continue while it appeals against Transport for London decisionUber has been stripped of its London licence after authorities found that more than 14,000 trips were taken with drivers who had faked their identity on the firm’s app.Transport for London announced the decision not to renew the ride-hailing company’s licence at the end of a two-month probationary extension granted in September. Uber was told then it needed to address issues with checks on drivers, insurance and safety, but has failed to satisfy the capital’s transport authorities. Continue reading...
Whether you are a driver or have been a passenger with Uber, we would like to hear from youUber has lost its licence to operate in London over passenger safety concerns. Transport for London (TfL) claimed Uber’s systems let unauthorised drivers to access the accounts of other drivers allowing them to pick up passengers, which happened on 14,000 trips. The company has 21 days to appeal the decision during which it can still operate.TfL said on Monday it had identified a “pattern of failures†by Uber, including several breaches that placed passengers and their safety at risk. Continue reading...
by Presented by Jordan Erica Webber and produced by D on (#4VM5V)
Jordan Erica Webber chats to the man behind the Hide the Pain Harold meme, and Elle Hunt explains why a person’s face might gain notoriety Continue reading...
Facebook claims its data collection is inherent to the way the internet works. The internet didn’t have to be this wayIt’s a quintessential experience of the digital age: you’re scrolling through Facebook, or reading an article online, and suddenly get served with an advertisement so narrowly targeted to a passing interest, secret desire, or undisclosed medical condition that you find yourself looking over your shoulder, shuddering, and asking yourself: “How did they know?â€While most of us have learned to shrug off our unease at these creepy encounters, a new report by Amnesty International made the bold case this week that we need to stop accepting the status quo and start seeing it for what it really is: a violation of our human rights “on an unprecedented scale†perpetrated by two American companies, Facebook and Google. Continue reading...
Retailer claims decision on ‘war cloud’ system is political and is contesting it in US federal courtAmazon has filed a lawsuit contesting the US defence department’s decision to award a Pentagon cloud computing contract worth up to $10bn (£7.8bn) to rival bidder Microsoft.The complaint and supplemental motion for discovery were filed in the US court of federal claims under seal, according to a spokesman for Amazon Web Services, a division of the online retail giant founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos. Continue reading...
Tesla’s chief designer smashed the vehicle’s windows in an attempt to demonstrate their toughnessDoes the act of someone’s net worth plummeting make an actual sound?If so, then for Elon Musk it would be the thonk of a metal ball splintering the purportedly unbreakable glass of his long-awaited cybertruck. Continue reading...
Firm considering to raise amout of targeted people from 100 to ‘a few thousands’Facebook’s plans to limit political advertising have taken another step, according to reports, as the company firms up plans to stop political advertisers from sending messages to very small numbers of people.According to the Wall Street Journal, the company has weighed up whether to increase the minimum amount of people targeted in any given political advert from 100, the current limit, to “a few thousandâ€. Continue reading...
We thought tech would bring us closer together. Instead it has scrambled our minds, our politics and our relationships. Can we burst our filter bubbles?In 2010, I joined Twitter. This momentous development went unnoticed by the world’s press – but to be fair, it went almost unnoticed by me, too. Certainly, I had no particular trepidation about getting involved in social media. The internet still embodied more promise than threat: the iPad was just arriving; Uber and Airbnb were finding their feet; “gamification†was going to solve everything from obesity to voter apathy, by turning tedious chores into fun digital challenges with points and prizes; the Arab spring, coordinated on social media, was a few months away. This was before the Rohingya genocide, before the teenage anxiety epidemic, before Cambridge Analytica and the alt-right and “fake newsâ€. In October 2010, the Guardian news blog ran a brief item on a darkly comical nightmare scenario for US politics: “Donald Trump considers running for president,†the headline read.What changed in the 2010s was not so much the arrival of new technology as the rapid evolution of a business model, the monetisation of attention. This wasn’t a recent invention; indeed, it dated back to the “yellow journalism†of the 19th century, which used sensationalist stories and cheap cover prices to build big audiences that advertisers would pay to reach. But ubiquitous high-speed mobile internet has sent the attention economy into hyperdrive, plunging us into an online world structured to prioritise not the truth, or what matters most, but whatever’s most compelling, which often means whatever makes us angriest. Continue reading...
The Facebook CEO views all politics as merely instrumental to the fortunes of his companyWhat are Mark Zuckerberg’s politics? Based on recent events, one might assume the young billionaire favors American conservatism, even explicit Republican positions.On Thursday, NBC News revealed that the CEO of Facebook had a secret dinner at the White House in October with President Donald Trump. Zuckerberg was accompanied by Facebook board member and long-time mentor Peter Thiel. Thiel is notorious among Silicon Valley billionaires for explicitly endorsing Trump in 2016 and speaking at the Republican National Convention that year. Thiel, a libertarian who runs a company that enhances government surveillance efforts, has also questioned the value of women voting. Continue reading...
The 12 complainants in the class action lawsuit say an algorithm that restricts content is an attempt to push them off the platformFour LGBT YouTubers have joined a class action lawsuit suing YouTube for discrimination, deceptive business practices and unlawful restraint of speech.The 12 complainants in total allege that the algorithm YouTube, and its parent company Google, uses to promote, censor and pair advertising with videos is discriminating against LGBT content just because it is made by and for LGBT people. Continue reading...
A demonstration intended to show the strength of the windows on Tesla's first pickup truck went wrong when one of the team threw a metal ball at them. The futuristic Cybertruck was unveiled in Los Angeles on Thursday. Production is expected to begin in late 2021
Technology | The Guardian