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...

Musk says Tim Cook ‘refused to take the meeting’ when a struggling Tesla could have been bought for a songElon Musk has said he contacted Apple Inc’s Tim Cook “during the darkest days of the Model 3 program” to discuss the possibility of Apple buying the Tesla electric car company for “1/10th of our current value … He [Cook] refused to take the meeting”.Musk’s comment followed reports that Apple is working on producing an electric car with advanced battery technology. In Twitter threads, Musk and others questioned the nature the technology, including what was referred to in reports as a “monocell” battery with lithium iron phosphate chemistry: Continue reading...

The site is best known for charging fees for nude content but making money off it is hard workThis time last year Jah Bella* was doing it tough. She had fled an abusive relationship, was looking after her newborn daughter and was struggling to find work in far north Queensland.“Every single regular job that I had, I was getting sexually harassed in some way,” she says. “I would either get fired or I’d have to leave once I reported it.” Continue reading...

Threatening messages led to monitoring of phone that unearthed evidence of cyber-attack against Qatar-based network

Select committee says strategy at risk from lack of adequate planning and investmentThe telecoms sector has “no genuine belief” the government will be able to meet its broadband targets, a parliamentary inquiry has found, despite those targets having been cut just weeks ago.In its national infrastructure strategy, published in late November, the government announced plans to connect 85% of the country with ultrafast gigabit broadband, which usually requires a fibre-to-the-home connection, by 2025. Continue reading...

Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel opens virtual reality film Symphony in MadridThe two huge white trailers that sit between the Royal Palace and the Royal theatre in central Madrid form an unlikely pair of portals to a universe of boundless visual and aural possibility.But step out of the December drizzle and in through their doors and you will find yourself crawling inside a violin, sitting in an orchestra before one of the most famous conductors in the world and bathed in a stream of lysergic images, all to the strains of Beethoven, Mahler and Leonard Bernstein. Continue reading...

Breach blamed on Russia saw hackers gain access to systems used by top department officials, says Ron WydenDozens of email accounts at the treasury department were compromised in a massive breach of US government agencies being blamed on Russia, with hackers breaking into systems used by the department’s highest-ranking officials, a senator said Monday after being briefed on the matter.Senator Ron Wyden, of Oregon, provided new details of the hack following a briefing to the Senate finance committee by the IRS and treasury department. Continue reading...

It has been a bumpy ride for Apple’s Project Titan, but sources suggest a passenger vehicle may not be far offApple is moving forward with self-driving car technology and is targeting 2024 to produce a passenger vehicle that could include its own battery technology, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.The iPhone maker’s automotive efforts, known as Project Titan, have proceeded unevenly since 2014 when it first started to design its own vehicle from scratch. At one point, Apple scaled back the effort to focus on software and reassessed its goals. Doug Field, an Apple veteran who had worked at Tesla, returned to oversee the project in 2018 and laid off 190 people from the team in 2019. Continue reading...

Elon Musk’s car firm becomes stock market’s sixth-largest member on joiningTesla has joined Wall Street’s prestigious S&P 500 share index as its sixth-largest member, immediately rubbing shoulders with the likes of Amazon, Apple and Facebook.Shares in the electric carmaker fell by more than 5% on its debut day on Monday, amid widespread investor concern about the potential impact on global trade of the mutant coronavirus strain identified in the UK. Continue reading...

Top luxury noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones – but at a price that demands perfectionApple’s first own-brand noise-cancelling headphones are heavy on the luxury and sound – but also on price.The AirPods Max cost £549 and are the most expensive of Apple’s headphones line that includes the £159 AirPods, £249 AirPods Pro and sets from the Beats brand such as the £270 Solo Pro and £300 Studio 3 Wireless. Continue reading...

Instead of gathering around the holiday table, we’ll be gathering around our laptops for awkward silences and Zoom fatigueYour laptop screen will be a window into your soul this holiday season, so take advantage of the opportunity to make your life appear under control. An upside to any global pandemic is that you don’t have to clean up for guests. When it comes to messes, it’s “out of screen, out of mind”. Meanwhile, you can create an idealized – and/or completely false – vision of your home life: fill the area behind you with thick volumes of poetry, or hardcore exercise equipment, or the only plant you have ever managed to keep alive for more than a week. Continue reading...

Nearly a week after federal agencies were targeted, investigators are still unclear on what information may have been stolen

Covid-19 pushed many into poverty but brought huge benefits for some of the wealthiest, renewing calls for fairer taxes

Users of smart speakers around the world can hear monarch’s speech without lifting a fingerFans of the Queen’s Christmas Day broadcast will be able to listen without lifting a finger – and not just because the TV’s been tuned to BBC One since The Gruffalo at 8.55am. Alexa users will be able to summon Her Majesty into their living rooms from 3pm GMT with the words “Alexa, play the Queen’s Christmas Day message”.The privilege isn’t reserved just for Brits. Anyone with their Amazon Echo set to English – be that British, American, Australian, Canadian or Indian – will be able to listen to the speech, Amazon has announced. Continue reading...

Microsoft’s president says NSO Group enables more nation-states to deploy cyber-attacks, including against journalists and activistsMicrosoft has called on the incoming Biden administration to weigh in on a high-profile legal case involving WhatsApp and NSO Group, the Israeli spyware firm that the US software company said was helping to proliferate cyber-weapons.Comparing NSO Group to 21st-century mercenaries, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, claimed that the rise of private companies that engineer cybersecurity attacks meant that an increasing number of nation-states could now deploy cyber-attacks – including against journalists and human rights activists. Continue reading...

Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks say they had to fight for fair pay and faced retaliation for advocating for changePinterest announced this week it would pay more than $20m to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit brought by a female executive. But to two Black former employees who had previously lodged similar complaints, the settlement represents a “slap in the face”. Continue reading...

Ryan’s World ‘child influencer’ also made estimated $200m from branded toys and clothingA nine-year-old boy has made nearly $30m in a year from “unboxing” and reviewing toys and games on YouTube to hold the title of highest-paid YouTuber for the third year running.Ryan Kaji, from Texas, made $29.5m (£22m) from his YouTube channel Ryan’s World, as well as a further estimated $200m from Ryan’s World branded toys and clothing, including Marks & Spencer pyjamas. He also signed an undisclosed, but likely multimillion dollar, deal for his own TV series on Nickelodeon. Continue reading...

At least six government departments breached in likely Russian intelligence operation thought to have begun in MarchThe US government is still in the dark over how deeply Russian hackers penetrated its networks during the worst ever cyber attack on federal agencies, members of Congress warned on Friday.At least six government departments were breached in a likely Russian intelligence operation thought to have begun in March. Although there is no evidence that classified networks were compromised, it is not known what the hackers may have stolen or how long it will take to purge them. Continue reading...

Government agencies around world among targets in SolarWinds ‘espionage-based’ hackMicrosoft has said the UK and six other countries outside the US have been affected by a suspected Russian hacking attack that US authorities have warned poses a grave risk to government and private networks.Brad Smith, Microsoft’s chief legal counsel, said the company had uncovered 40 customers, including government agencies, thinktanks, NGOs and IT companies, who were “targeted more precisely and compromised” after the hackers had gained initial access earlier this year. Continue reading...

Starring Keanu Reeves and hyped to the heavens, Projekt Red’s dystopian but glitchy romp has been pulled from sale. What went wrong?Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most-anticipated video games of the year was released last week. A dystopian romp around a Blade Runner-inspired city, it had all the ingredients for a perfect storm of hype: it’s been nearly a decade in the making; its creator, Warsaw’s CD Projekt Red, was behind one of the greatest games of the last decade (The Witcher 3 – think Game of Thrones but grimier); it stars Keanu Reeves, who is as popular with gamers as he is with everybody else. Eight million people had pre-ordered and paid for the game before it came out. But since 10 December, it’s all gone horribly wrong.On launch day, the reviews were good – great, even. Many critics praised the fictional Night City’s realism, its striking skyscraping architecture and grubby alleys; they loved the invigorating gunplay, ballsy characters and neon swagger. Some expressed reservations about the game’s rather adolescent tone and its eagerness to objectify women’s bodies – neither of which were a surprise to anyone who’d been keeping an eye on the game’s marketing. Continue reading...

Analysis: new president must find a way to contain such hyper-aggressive behaviour from MoscowIt is Joe Biden’s biggest foreign policy headache. As well as confronting the Covid pandemic, the president-elect has to deal with a more familiar problem: Russia. Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential election cast a shadow over US politics for four long years.And now the Kremlin appears to have struck again. This week details emerged of an unprecedented cyber-attack against US government departments. Beginning in March, suspected Russian hackers penetrated Washington’s signature institutions. Continue reading...

Developer forced to add health warning and apologise after launch of hotly anticipated gameSony has announced it is pulling this year’s most-hyped video game, Cyberpunk 2077, from its online PlayStation store after complaints of bugs, compatibility issues and health risks.“SIE (Sony Interactive Entertainment) strives to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction, therefore we will begin to offer a full refund for all gamers who have purchased Cyberpunk 2077 via PlayStation Store,” the firm said in a statement posted on international PlayStation sites in the US, Australia and elsewhere. Continue reading...

Good keyboard, nice design and solid build let down by hot running, poor battery life and software bugsThe Surface Laptop Go is Microsoft’s attempt to bring the best features of its premium machines to the mid-range PC market – but with a few corners cut.Starting at £549, it comes in below the £999 Surface Laptop 3 and £799 Surface Pro 7, but above the £399 Surface Go 2 tablet. Continue reading...

From rediscovering nature in 2020 to getting to grips with Zoom, readers tell us what they gained in a year when so much was lost

National Labor Relations Board finds merit to complaint over discharge of Gerald Bryson in Staten IslandA National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) investigation has found merit to a complaint that said Amazon illegally discharged a protesting warehouse worker in New York City, according to an NLRB spokesperson.Gerald Bryson, an Amazon associate, was helping to lead a protest outside a company warehouse in Staten Island, New York on 6 April while off the job, when he got into a dispute with another worker, according to Bryson’s attorney Frank Kearl. Continue reading...

‘Significant and ongoing’ cyber attack, suspected to be the work of Russia, poses a grave risk to ‘critical infrastructure entities’ as wellThe US government continues to reel from a large and sophisticated hacking campaign that affected top federal agencies, including the energy department, the treasury and commerce departments, and is even said to have targeted the agency responsible for the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile.Authorities expressed increasing alarm over the hack, suspected to be the work of Russia, warning that it poses “a grave risk” to federal, state and local governments, as well as “critical infrastructure entities”. Continue reading...

‘Anti-vaxxer’ misinformation to be tackled from next week, and conspiracy theories from 2021Twitter will remove tweets that spread harmful misinformation, starting with the Covid-19 vaccine, the company has announced – and from 2021 it will begin to label tweets that push conspiracy theories.The move sees the company follow Facebook and YouTube in tightening up policies around the coronavirus vaccination as the rollout of the jab begins across the world. Continue reading...

Russian agents are suspected in the Orion breach, which affected the treasury and commerce departments – and perhaps othersA vast trove of US government emails has been targeted in a hack thought to have been carried out by Russia, American officials revealed on Monday.The stunningly large and sophisticated operation reportedly targeted federal government networks and marks the biggest cyber-raid against US officials in years. The treasury and commerce departments were both affected and others may have been breached. Continue reading...

Former chief operating officer Françoise Brougher accepts settlement on condition it is made public

UK government sets out strict guidelines to govern removal of material promoting child sexual abuse and terrorismSocial media companies will need to remove and limit the spread of harmful content or face fines of billions of pounds, the UK government has announced, as it finally reveals the details of its proposed internet regulation.The online harms bill, first proposed by Theresa May’s government in April 2019, sets out strict new guidelines governing removal of illegal content such as child sexual abuse, terrorist material and media that promotes suicide, which sites must obey or face being blocked in the UK. Continue reading...

UK government sets out strict guidelines to govern removal of material promoting child sexual abuse and terrorismSocial media companies will need to remove and limit the spread of harmful content or face fines of billions of pounds, the UK government has announced, as it finally reveals the details of its proposed internet regulation.The online harms bill, first proposed by Theresa May’s government in April 2019, sets out strict new guidelines governing removal of illegal content such as child sexual abuse, terrorist material and media that promotes suicide, which sites must obey or face being blocked in the UK. Continue reading...

Our updated list of great Bluetooth truly wireless earbuds – at the best prices right nowIt wasn’t long ago that true wireless earbuds, those that don’t need any wires even between the earphones, weren’t very good. Solid connectivity was a challenge, dropouts were infuriatingly common and battery life was woeful.But they all offered that taste of freedom from wires that is like a ratchet – once you’ve experienced tangle-free listening, you’ll never go back. Continue reading...

Error was due to lack of storage space in authentication tools causing system to crashGoogle has suffered a worldwide outage, with failures reported across the company’s services, including Gmail, Google Calendar and YouTube. Beginning at about 11.50am GMT, the outages appeared to have affected the vast majority of Google’s services, apart from search, which operated largely unaffected.Despite the universal nature of the outages, the company’s automated systems reported no problems for any services for the first 30 minutes, across both consumer-facing and its cloud tools for developers. At 12.25pm, the company published an update, saying “We’re aware of a problem … affecting a majority of users. The affected users are unable to access [Google services].” Continue reading...

Analysis: eavesdropping on high-value targets is labour intensive so hackers may not have made most of accessIf there is one silver lining to the months-long global cyber-espionage campaign discovered when a prominent cybersecurity firm learned it had been breached, it might be that the sheer numbers of potentially compromised entities offers them some protection.By compromising one piece of security software – a security tool called Orion developed by the Texan company SolarWinds – the attackers gained access to an extraordinary array of potential targets in the US alone: more than 425 of the Fortune 500 list of top companies; all of the top 10 telecommunications companies; all five branches of the military; and all of the top five accounting firms. Continue reading...

FBI to investigate after US Treasury and Department of Commerce believed to have been targetedRussian hackers are being accused of carrying out the biggest cyber-raid against the US for more than five years, targeting federal government networks in a sophisticated attack, according to American officials and sources.The hackers, linked to Russian spy agencies, were able to monitor internal emails at the US Treasury and Department of Commerce and may have compromised other bodies, in what is being described as a highly sophisticated state-level attack. Continue reading...

Our updated list of the best pay-TV and streaming services in the UKThe choice of how you get your TV and movies in the UK has exploded in recent years, with a growing number of premium pay-TV providers and streaming services available at a wide range of prices.Many of them have long contracts, exclusive content and complicated bundled pricing. And that’s before you work out how to actually get it to your television, whether it is live broadcast TV via the traditional routes of aerial, satellite or cable, new offerings of streaming live TV over the internet, on-demand download or streaming services, or a mix of all three. All of which makes choosing the right one for you a bit of a minefield of information overload. Continue reading...