Firm fined £500,000 for lack of transparency and failing to protect users’ informationFacebook is to be fined £500,000, the maximum amount possible, for its part in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the information commissioner has announced.The fine is for two breaches of the Data Protection Act. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) concluded that Facebook failed to safeguard its users’ information and that it failed to be transparent about how that data was harvested by others. Continue reading...
Elon Musk says first facility outside the US will build 500,000 cars a yearTesla is to open a new electric car production plant in Shanghai, its first outside the US, chief executive Elon Musk said from the city on Tuesday.The new auto plant is slated to produce 500,000 cars a year, taking Tesla’s total global manufacturing capacity to 1m vehicles a year. Most automotive factories are tooled to produce 200,000 to 300,000 vehicles a year. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Self-flying vehicle firms got $2m last year, as US military envisions taxis as more Blade Runner than Back to the FutureTwo start-ups leading the race to build the first self-flying taxis are using money from the US military.Last year, Kitty Hawk and Joby Aviation received a total of nearly $2m from the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), a Pentagon organization founded to help America’s military make faster use of emerging technologies. Neither company, nor the DIUx, disclosed the funding at the time. Continue reading...
New 10in Windows 10 tablet is half the cost of Surface Pro, aimed at Apple’s iPad and Google’s Chromebooks but running OfficeMicrosoft has unveiled its direct challenge to Apple’s iPad, the cheaper, smaller and lighter Surface Go 2-in-1 Windows 10 tablet.
Less than a year after launching, Ofo bikes and Reddy Go are both pulling outThe wheels are falling off Australia’s once burgeoning share bike economy, after two more companies announced they were pulling out of capital city markets.China-owned Ofo bikes and the Australian company Reddy Go were both greeted as part of the shift towards bike sharing when they launched in Australia last year. Ofo is the largest bike-sharing company in the world, and has been labelled the “Uber for bikesâ€. Continue reading...
Site to promote videos and articles by vetted sources amid rash of conspiracy theoriesYouTube is investing $25m (£18.8m) in journalism on its platform, focusing on helping news organisations produce online videos and changing its site to better support trusted news providers.As well as the investment, which will be partly used to fund a working group to spearhead news product features, the company is changing how its site works to “make authoritative sources readily accessibleâ€. Continue reading...
Result puts Britain in bottom third of EU countries and below MadagascarThe UK has slipped to 35th place in an annual league table of global broadband speeds, putting it in the bottom third of EU countries and below the likes of Madagascar and Bulgaria.An analysis of more than 160m broadband speed tests conducted across 200 countries revealed Singapore was once again the world’s fastest country, followed by Sweden, Denmark and Norway, while Yemen came last.
Electronics manufacturers know exactly how big wall outlets are – so why do they make plugs so big that they obscure more than one?Name: Plugspreading.Age: It has been creeping up on us for some years now. Continue reading...
The social media giant has assembled a team of experts to spot abuses and protect the company’s reputation. But what do security experts think?Technology companies like to talk about the huge benign changes their products will bring about. Take Facebook, with its mission to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer togetherâ€. Or Google, which wants to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and usefulâ€. Microsoft hopes to “empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve moreâ€. Even Snapchat, which opens its corporate bio with the humble claim that “Snap Inc is a camera companyâ€, can’t help but note: “We contribute to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.â€Such statements demonstrate the scale of ambition that is the norm among technology’s largest companies. It is rare, however, to find much time or effort dedicated to the unplanned consequences of world-beating new technologies. Continue reading...
The ground on which politics happens has changed – yet our political language has not kept upA Russian-fed misinformation campaign across Facebook and Twitter, plus powerful data-targeting techniques pioneered by the Obama campaign, helped propel Donald Trump into the White House.
Ryker Gamble, Alexey Lyakh and Megan Scraper were vloggers for High On Life, an extreme travel channelThree young YouTube stars have died at a waterfall in Canada.Police said Ryker Gamble, Alexey Lyakh and Megan Scraper were swimming at the top of Shannon Falls in British Columbia on Tuesday when they “slipped and fell into a pool 30 metres belowâ€. Continue reading...
Psychologist Michal Kosinski says artificial intelligence can detect your sexuality and politics just by looking at your face. What if he’s right?Vladimir Putin was not in attendance, but his loyal lieutenants were. On 14 July last year, the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, and several members of his cabinet convened in an office building on the outskirts of Moscow. On to the stage stepped a boyish-looking psychologist, Michal Kosinski, who had been flown from the city centre by helicopter to share his research. “There was Lavrov, in the first row,†he recalls several months later, referring to Russia’s foreign minister. “You know, a guy who starts wars and takes over countries.†Kosinski, a 36-year-old assistant professor of organisational behaviour at Stanford University, was flattered that the Russian cabinet would gather to listen to him talk. “Those guys strike me as one of the most competent and well-informed groups,†he tells me. “They did their homework. They read my stuff.â€Kosinski’s “stuff†includes groundbreaking research into technology, mass persuasion and artificial intelligence (AI) – research that inspired the creation of the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. Five years ago, while a graduate student at Cambridge University, he showed how even benign activity on Facebook could reveal personality traits – a discovery that was later exploited by the data-analytics firm that helped put Donald Trump in the White House. Continue reading...
ANU has spent several months fighting off a threat to its systems, which some reports say can be traced to ChinaAustralia’s top-ranked university says it has spent several months fighting off a threat to its computer systems, which some media reports say have been compromised by Chinese hackers.Repeated allegations of hacking and internet spying have contributed to a recent chill in Sino-Australian relations, just as they have long strained ties between China and the United States. Continue reading...
by Presented by Jordan Erica Webber and produced by D on (#3TCQR)
Academics and scientists are struggling to find ways to tackle the latest form of online sexual abuseSubscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, AudioBoom, Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook, Twitter or email us at chipspodcast@theguardian.com.At the end of 2017 and into 2018, the media became aware of a disturbing trend taking hold in certain online communities: deepfake pornography. A master manipulator can create a convincing video in mere hours. Continue reading...
Using what one expert calls a ‘Wizard of Oz technique’, some companies keep their reliance on humans a secret from investorsIt’s hard to build a service powered by artificial intelligence. So hard, in fact, that some startups have worked out it’s cheaper and easier to get humans to behave like robots than it is to get machines to behave like humans.“Using a human to do the job lets you skip over a load of technical and business development challenges. It doesn’t scale, obviously, but it allows you to build something and skip the hard part early on,†said Gregory Koberger, CEO of ReadMe, who says he has come across a lot of “pseudo-AIsâ€. Continue reading...
Scouring photos for a conversation starter has become standard on Tinder, as a woman’s viral post about toilet paper provesThe perfect Tinder photo: yes, it has to get you on your good side and disguise that double chin, but is there more to it than just looking good?Hana Michels, a comedian and writer from LA, who shared a screengrab of her Tinder profile to Twitter this week, found that a lot of men whom she matched with weren’t interested in her at all but in her toilet paper holder. She explained that she had been chastised by no fewer than 23 men in a year for the direction in which her toilet paper was facing – a small detail in the background of the photo. Continue reading...
Barbara is constantly being interrupted by pop-ups about the new GDPR. Is there anything she can do?Because of GDPR, it feels as though my internet access – my access to information – is now more restricted. I am constantly being interrupted by pop-ups that want me to agree to the website’s privacy policy, use of my data and so on, in order to “personalise my experienceâ€. After recent revelations about unauthorised use of personal data, I’m wary of agreeing without checking what their proposals are, but I often just close the page because there are too many options and it’s too much of a bother. Am I being too paranoid? BarbaraThe General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) only came into force on 25 May and it will take a while for some websites to adapt. Breaking the rules can result in fines of up to €20m, so at this point, information providers are probably more paranoid than you are. Continue reading...
by Mark Sweney in London and Jennifer Rankin in Bruss on (#3TA7P)
Controversial new law that critics claimed threatened internet freedom is rejectedGoogle, YouTube and Facebook could escape having to make billions in payouts to press publishers, record labels and artists after EU lawmakers voted to reject proposed changes to copyright rules that aimed to make the tech companies share more of their revenues.The proposed new rules, which have been going through the European parliament for almost two years, have sparked an increasingly bitter battle between the internet giants and owners and creators of content, with both sides ferociously lobbying their cause. Continue reading...
Internet entrepreneur and Megaupload founder to appeal to supreme court after ruling on intellectual property rights upheldNew Zealand’s court of appeal has ruled that internet entrepreneur and Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom could be extradited to the United States to face racketeering and criminal copyright charges.
Consumer group says policies of Facebook, Amazon and Google are vague and unclearPrivacy policies from companies including Facebook, Google and Amazon don’t fully meet the requirements of GDPR, according to the pan-European consumer group BEUC.An analysis of policies from 14 of the largest internet companies shows they use unclear language, claim “potentially problematic†rights, and provide insufficient information for users to judge what they are agreeing to. Continue reading...
Morris Minors | Bra technique | Football comes home | CO2 shortageFor those who own a Morris Minor (Letters, passim), may I offer the following advice. If you’re stuck in the back blocks of Morocco because of fuel vaporisation, as two hippies were in 1970, I remember applying the offending pipe with the contents of an aerosol can of foot odour spray to cool it down. Worked a treat. We then proceeded to Marrakech, of which I remember little.
Laser light shows and drone displays will replace fireworks across drought-stricken areas of the western US on Independence DayThe night sky above Aspen will light up with a patriotic display this Fourth of July as always – just not with the usual fireworks.
With the new series starting we would like to hear your stories as John and John go in search for the country’s real politicsAs part of a new series of Anywhere But Westminster videos, John Harris and John Domokos are exploring the impact of automation, the internet, and technology in general on the workplace and the high street.
NBN operator could be punished for lengthy repair times and missed appointments, party saysThe operator of the national broadband network could be fined for lengthy repair times and missed appointments under a Labor proposal to establish a wholesale service guarantee. Continue reading...
A UK-based startup has developed a geocoding tool that could revolutionise how we find places, from a remote African village dwelling to your tent at a rock festivalIn common with perhaps 15 million South Africans, Eunice Sewaphe does not have a street address. Her two-room house is in a village called Relela, in a verdant, hilly region of the Limpopo province, five hours’ drive north-east of Johannesburg. If you visited Relela, you might be struck by several things the village lacks – modern sanitation, decent roads, reliable electricity – before you were struck by a lack of street names or house numbers. But living essentially off-map has considerable consequence for people like Eunice. It makes it tough to get a bank account, hard to register to vote, difficult to apply for a job or even receive a letter. For the moment, though, those ongoing concerns are eclipsed by another, larger anxiety. Eunice Sewaphe is nine months pregnant – her first child is due in two days’ time – and she is not quite sure, without an address, how she will get to hospital.Sitting in the sun with Eunice and her neighbours outside her house, in a yard in which chickens peck in the red dirt, she explained to me, somewhat hesitantly, her current plan for the imminent arrival. The nearest hospital, Van Velden, in the town of Tzaneen, is 40 minutes away by car. When Eunice goes into labour, she will have to somehow get to the main road a couple of miles away in order to find a taxi, for which she and her husband have been saving up a few rand a week. If there are complications, or if the baby arrives at night, she may need an ambulance. But since no ambulance could find her house without an address, this will again necessitate her getting out to the main road. In the past, women from Relela, in prolonged labour, have had to be taken in wheelbarrows to wait for emergency transport that may or may not come. Continue reading...
As the number of young gamers has risen sharply, so have addiction narrativesGaming disorder may be a newly recognised condition, but disordered gaming is anything but new. In 2010, a Korean couple was arrested for fatal child neglect spurred by an obsession with Prius Online. Five years earlier, another Korean man collapsed and died after a 50-hour session playing StarCraft in an internet cafe.In the west, World of Warcraft, released in 2004, was one of the first games to trigger addiction narratives in the mainstream press, with the game blamed for causing college students to drop out of university and others losing careers and families. Continue reading...
Huge popularity of online games sparks fears over young people’s mental healthKendal Parmar’s son went from being a sporty and sociable boy who loved school, to a child who would stay in his room and rarely go outside.The change in his personality was down to a gaming disorder that crept up on him at the age of 12, when he started secondary school. Three years later, Joseph is still struggling with the problem. Continue reading...
Young women should be inspired to work on some of the world’s most exciting innovations, says Yasmin AliOn Saturday (International Women in Engineering Day) we celebrate the many achievements of female engineers globally. This is a welcome time to reflect, yet here in the UK, just 11% of engineers are women. Engineering is behind many of the things we take for granted, such as roads, bridges, railways, electricity generation and clean water, but it is also behind AI, robotics, smartphones and wearable technology – some of the most exciting recent technological developments. To get more women into engineering, we must communicate its many applications more clearly to young women. Through doing so we can inspire many more to join a profession that can see them working on some of the world’s most exciting innovations. Once there, we must do all we can to challenge and inspire female engineers.The Create the Future report, a 10,000-person global study by the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, found 92% of respondents felt engineering had an impact on people’s daily lives. Yet only through a better-balanced sector will we be able to build a world fit for the future.
Company to close facilities and end Home Depot partnership after buying company founded by Elon Musk’s cousinsThe electric car maker Tesla is sharply downsizing the residential solar business it bought two years ago in a controversial $2.6bn deal, according to three internal company documents and seven current and former Tesla solar employees.The latest cuts to the division that was once SolarCity – a sales and installation company founded by two cousins of Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk – include closing about a dozen installation facilities, according to internal company documents, and ending a retail partnership with Home Depot that the current and former employees said generated about half of its sales. Continue reading...
by Presented by Jordan Erica Webber and produced by D on (#3SSRS)
Jordan Erica Webber chats to a panel of artificial intelligence experts about what Sundar Pichai’s seven objectives could mean in practiceSubscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, AudioBoom, Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook, Twitter or email us at chipspodcast@theguardian.com.In April 2017, the US Department of Defense launched an Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team, otherwise known as Project Maven. The project uses Google’s artificial intelligence to analyse drone footage. Continue reading...
Rafaela Vasquez looked up half a second before Arizona crash that killed woman, report saysThe “safety†driver behind the wheel of a self-driving Uber that hit and killed a pedestrian was streaming the television show The Voice on her phone at the time of the crash, police have said.The collision that killed Elaine Herzberg, 49, who was crossing the road at night in Tempe, Arizona, was “entirely avoidableâ€, a police report said, if Rafaela Vasquez had been paying attention. Continue reading...
The electric carmaker is suing a former technician for alleged hacking, but he says he’s being scapegoated for leaking concernsOn Wednesday morning, Martin Tripp was an out-of-work Tesla technician trying to figure out what to do next.By the end of the day, he had been sued by his former employer for alleged hacking and theft, engaged in a hostile email exchange with Elon Musk, come out as a whistleblower, and was being patted down by sheriff’s deputies over allegations that he was threatening to go to his former workplace and “shoot the place upâ€. Continue reading...
Tech firm says relationship was in violation of the company’s non-fraternization policy, which applies to all managersIntel chief executive Brian Krzanich is resigning after the company learned of a consensual relationship that he had with an employee.The company, one of the world’s largest makers of semiconductor chips, said that the relationship was in violation of the company’s non-fraternization policy. Continue reading...
James wants to know whether he should opt for an SSD or HDD to save his files onI am hoping to go to university this year and am looking for a laptop. What’s the difference between an SSD and an HDD, and which would be better for a student? From what I’ve seen, you can get roughly four times as much storage on an HDD as you can on an SSD for the same price, so it seems an HDD would be the better option. JamesThe laptop market is moving from traditional “spinning rust†hard disk drives (HDDs) to chip-based, solid-state drives (SSDs) for several reasons. SSDs are more responsive; they consume less battery power; they are less likely to break when dropped and they take up a lot less space.
Victoria says it will stick with decisions being made by individual schools• Sign up to receive the top stories in Australia every day at noonThe New South Wales government has announced a comprehensive review of smartphone use in schools, but the Victorian government says it is unlikely to follow suit.On Thursday the NSW education minister, Rob Stokes, said the review – to be headed by a child psychologist, Michael Carr-Gregg – would examine the prevalence and effect of technology in classrooms, and would consult parents, teachers and education groups. Continue reading...
Videos of up to an hour are effort to pull young users away from rival, and to allow Facebook to sell more adsInstagram will increase its video time limit from one minute to 10 minutes for most users, in an attempt to lure younger viewers away from YouTube.In the expansion, announced Wednesday, Instagram accounts with large audiences will be able to go as long as an hour. Video will be available through Instagram or a new app called IGTV. The video will eventually give Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, more opportunities to sell advertising. Continue reading...
by Sally Weale Education correspondent on (#3SNBN)
Culture secretary condemns unsupervised access to smartphones and urges more heads to ban them in schoolsThe culture secretary has said it is up to parents to set boundaries around their children’s use of the internet and has condemned unlimited and unsupervised access to smartphones.Matt Hancock, whose brief includes digital issues, agreed parenting in the digital era was difficult but he said it was not impossible and he urged parents to set boundaries around new technology in the same way they have always set boundaries for their children.
by Mark Sweney Media business correspondent on (#3SN2Z)
Platforms could have to seek licences for videos after European parliament actionYouTube stars from Taylor Swift to Ed Sheeran, Beyonce and Jay-Z could be in line for big paydays after the video giant lost a crucial vote in Brussels over new copyright laws that will force it to pay billions of dollars in fees for users watching music videos.For years the music industry has argued that YouTube exploits the lack of legal protection around music videos being viewed on its service to pay minimal amounts to artists and labels when they are viewed. The music industry has lobbied that this “value gap†between the true worth of the music videos and what YouTube decides to pay needs to be addressed with legislation. Continue reading...
MEPs defy warnings from internet pioneers, civil liberties groups and commercial interestsA European parliament committee has voted for legislation that internet pioneers fear will turn the web into “a tool for surveillance and controlâ€.In a key vote on a draft law to overhaul EU copyright rules, the parliament’s legal affairs committee on Wednesday voted for measures that would require the likes of Google and Microsoft to install filters to prevent users from uploading copyrighted materials.
The culture secretary who heads up the digital brief says tech makes parenting harderThe culture secretary has called on more schools to ban mobile phones.Matt Hancock said he admired those headteachers who did not allow their use during the school day and linked social media use with the problem of bullying among young children. Continue reading...
Aleksandr Kogan, who harvested Facebook profiles, dismisses idea as ‘science fiction’ during Senate hearingThe academic researcher who harvested personal data from Facebook for a political consultancy firm said on Tuesday that the idea the data was useful in swaying voters’ decisions was “science fictionâ€.“People may feel angry and violated if they think their data was used in some kind of mind-control project,†Aleksandr Kogan, the now notorious Cambridge University psychologist whose app collected data on up to 87 million Facebook users, said during a US Senate hearing. “This is science fiction. The data is entirely ineffective.†Continue reading...
by Peter Allen Clark, Keza MacDonald and Keith Stuart on (#3SJRX)
From samurai to cyberpunk via ancient Greece, here are the most exciting games from the 100s shown off at this year’s expoAn expansive third-person action game set on foreign planets, Anthem rides the coattails of Destiny, The Division and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands, and promises wide multiplayer support that will continue long after it launches . At first glance it looks a lot like Destiny, with four players in mech exosuits blasting away at space creatures with rifles, pulse cannons, grenades and missiles. There’s a touch of Horizon Zero Dawn in some of the dino-shaped mechs, Monster Hunter in the lush, dramatic environment and wildlife and Halo in the enemies and weapon design. In combat, Anthem recalls Titanfall, as you transition from hovering, to dodging, landing, sprinting and swimming, experimenting with the weighty arsenal of weapons. Developer BioWare is known for great stories: we’ve seen none of that aspect of Anthem yet, but it feels great to play.
As peer-to-peer messaging becomes a popular campaign tool, volunteers face a new danger – unwanted repliesCampaign volunteers have always faced certain hazards when they go out and engage in democracy. For phone bankers, there are hang-ups; for canvassers, a door slammed in the face.But as more campaigns turn to peer-to-peer texting as an efficient and effective form of contacting voters, a new danger has arisen: unsolicited dick pics. Continue reading...
Despite their potential, no one has managed to take them from flight of fancy to everyday realityIn 1940, Henry Ford said: “Mark my words – a combination aeroplane and motor car is coming.†With flying taxis apparently on the way, it looks like he was right, but what a wait. Eight decades years later, “dude, where’s my flying car?†is shorthand for any stuff “they†promised us that we haven’t got.We have always wanted to fly, so, as soon as cars came on to the scene, we wanted those to fly too. Early blueprints for the US interstate highway grid even had adjacent runways ready for flying cars. But those never came. Now that concept of the flying “car†seems quaint or naive, a 20th-century dream fuelled by decades of sci-fi and the Jetsons, as obsolete as the model T. Yet as we’ll see, something just as good may take its place. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian