The prison where sensors and wristbands are saving lives, cutting hospital visits and reducing costsJim Lees woke up late one night needing to use the toilet. As he sat up in bed, he felt dizzy, then blacked out and fell to the floor.He remembers: “Everything went blank. I fell and was unconscious. I don’t know how long I was out.†When Lees [not his real name], 80, did regain consciousness, he couldn’t get back up. “My foot wouldn’t grip the floor. There was blood and urine everywhere. I just don’t know what happened to me.†Continue reading...
Firm’s move comes as Amazon removes one of far-right activist’s books from saleYouTube has defended its decision to keep Tommy Robinson on its platform, arguing that the far-right activist’s content on its site is fundamentally different from the posts that led Facebook and Instagram to delete his account last week.Additionally, Amazon has removed one of Robinson’s books, Mohammed’s Koran: Why Muslims Kill For Islam, from sale. His autobiography remains on the site. The company confirmed its decision to the Guardian, saying that “we reserve the right not to sell certain inappropriate contentâ€. Continue reading...
Electric cars featured heavily at the 89th annual motoring showcase event in Switzerland, as manufacturers rolled out new electric and hybrid models to address tougher emissions requirements in Europe. SUVs and SUV-like crossovers also had a good showing, in addition to new prestige and performance models and concepts from car makers Continue reading...
The latest internet meme involves a significant waste of cheese – and may not be entirely welcomed by the world’s baby communityName: The cheese challenge.Age: Five days. Continue reading...
Machines can already write music and beat us at games like chess and Go. But the rise of artificial intelligence should inspire hope as well as fear, says Marcus du SautoyAs Marcus du Sautoy greets me at the entrance to New College, Oxford, his appearance is a quiet riot of colour. His clothes rather suggest someone who ran into White Stuff or Fat Face and frantically grabbed anything he could find – in this case, a salmon zip-up top, multihued check trousers and shoes that are a headache-inducing shade of turquoise. When we settle down to talk in a nearby meeting room, he repeatedly glances at a notepad – whose pages, just to add to all the garishness, are a bold shade of yellow.They are full of what look like scrawled equations, mixed with odd-looking shapes: the raw material, he explains, of a project involving very complicated geometry. “There’s an infinite symmetrical structure that I’m looking at,†he says, “and I think the top bit of it will tell me everything that’s going on inside it. It’s almost like an infinite lake, and I should be able to know everything that’s happening in it by looking at the first centimetre.†Continue reading...
Ranking of 230 countries placed UK 136th, with India as cheapest countryThe UK is one of the priciest countries in Europe for mobile phone data, with Britons typically paying almost six times more than their counterparts in Finland, according to a new study.Some may also be surprised to see that the top 10 cheapest countries in the world include the likes of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Sudan. Continue reading...
Amnesty says social media firm must do more to support users who report harassmentHuman rights campaigners have called for action after a survey revealed that more than half of the reports that women lodge about harassment on Facebook are met with no action from the social media company.The Survation poll, commissioned by the feminist campaign group Level Up, found that 29% of the 1,000 women who took part had been harassed on Facebook. Continue reading...
Retailer also introduces serial numbers and automatic detection to curb frauds salesAmazon will hand over unprecedented powers to brands to remove suspected counterfeits from its site, as part of a concerted push to eliminate fakes and frauds from the shopping experience.Under the company’s new Project Zero programme, companies will now be able to remove counterfeit listings themselves, without having to wait for Amazon to take action. Continue reading...
Contact details supplied by users to enable two-factor authentication led to reduced privacyFacebook has been accused of abusing a security feature in order to weaken user privacy, after the social network was found using phone numbers initially handed over for account safety for other purposes.The company now faces criticism that it will be harder to convince users to take other necessary security measures if users view this as an abuse of trust. Continue reading...
Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Home and other AI devices tend to be voiced by women, playing into the stereotype that serving is a woman’s job. But do robots need to be gendered at all?Microsoft has Cortana, Amazon has Alexa, and Google has … well, Google Assistant. That last name doesn’t give it away, but get it talking and the common link between all three AI assistants is revealed: they are all supposed to be women.Providing assistance has long been considered a woman’s role, whether virtual or physical, fictional or real. The robots that men voice, meanwhile, tend to be in positions of power – often dangerously so. Think Hal 9000, or the Terminator: when a robot needs to be scary, it sounds like a man. Continue reading...
by Presented by Jordan Erica Webber and produced by D on (#4AAB7)
Jordan Erica Webber talks to Douglas Rushkoff about his new book, Team Human, a call to arms for people to start working togetherJordan is joined by Douglas Rushkoff, the author and professor of media theory at Queens College, City University of New York. With his new book, Team Human, he hopes to explain how tools meant to improve human connection, such as the internet, have ended up being used against us, and why people have to relearn how to work together to fight back. Continue reading...
From a ‘battle royale’ showdown to a shoot ’em up revival, three mixed new titles demonstrate the value to games of genresGenres, as the graphic novelist Alan Moore once wrote, are pretty much only useful for directing the WH Smith’s clerk in which section to place the books. The best work is woven from threads of comedy, tragedy, romance, horror and all the rest. It defies, in other words, tedious categorisation. In video games, however, the strictures of genre cannot be so easily dismissed. Game design is tactile, quasi-architectural in nature. Games are more easily grouped, then, and drift in and out of fashion more readily than film and literature, as a trio of this month’s releases demonstrate.The Ukrainian fingerprints of Metro Exodus’s development team are pressed clearly into each of its snowy, menacing landscapes. This game, based on the bleak, post-apocalyptic novels of the Russian writer Dmitry Glukhovsky, comes from a team clearly familiar with the texture of post-nuclear disaster: the blackened berries withering on the bushes, the homeless dogs, nature’s relentless reclamation of all human edifice. The effects of this fictional nuclear holocaust have surely been exaggerated for video game effect – the swamp sharks and mutant horses, to name but two – but there’s a melancholy near to the surface of this brittle shooter that has the quality of lived experience. Continue reading...
by Carole Cadwalladr and Duncan Campbell on (#4A7JM)
Social network targeted legislators around the world, promising or threatening to withhold investmentFacebook has targeted politicians around the world – including the former UK chancellor, George Osborne – promising investments and incentives while seeking to pressure them into lobbying on Facebook’s behalf against data privacy legislation, an explosive new leak of internal Facebook documents has revealed.The documents, which have been seen by the Observer and Computer Weekly, reveal a secretive global lobbying operation targeting hundreds of legislators and regulators in an attempt to procure influence across the world, including in the UK, US, Canada, India, Vietnam, Argentina, Brazil, Malaysia and all 28 states of the EU. The documents include details of how Facebook: Continue reading...
Retail giant plans to open its first store in Los Angeles as early as the end of the year, according to a Wall Street Journal reportAmazon plans to open dozens of grocery stores across the United States as it looks to expand in the food business, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.Related: Return order: New York leaders plead with Bezos to reconsider Amazon deal Continue reading...
Children’s charities say warnings about online suicide challenge have done more harm than goodBritain’s media, schools and police forces were told on Thursday to stop promoting an online hoax about the so-called Momo challenge, amid fears that unjustified warnings about the supposed phenomenon risked doing more harm than good.The Momo challenge centres on false claims that a mysterious character is using WhatsApp messages to encourage children to kill themselves. After it moved from the fringes of the internet to the mass media, interventions from authority figures were blamed for creating a full-blown moral panic – and genuine fear among children. Continue reading...
Features such as loot boxes need tighter regulation, says deputy Labour leaderGambling-style features in computer games, which encourage players to pay for items such as loot boxes that may be worth very little, warrant stricter oversight by the Gambling Commission to prevent them becoming a “gateway†to betting addiction, Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, said.Speaking as he proposed much tighter controls on online gambling, including caps on the amount that consumers can gamble, Watson said not enough was being done to deal with gambling through games. Continue reading...
Organisation to give support to and encourage greater representation of people of colour in UK game developmentA group of games industry insiders has launched a new initiative to tackle the problem of poor diversity in the UK video game development sector.POC in Play is described by the group as a racial equity and inclusion movement with an aim to improve representation and to provide events and initiatives for people of colour either working in the industry or thinking of joining. Continue reading...
App to set up ‘age-appropiate’ rules for under-13s to comply with US data protection lawsTikTok, the popular video-sharing app formerly known as Musical.ly, has agreed to a record $5.7m (£4.2m) fine with the US Federal Trade Commission after being accused of illegally collecting personal information from children under 13.The app, which is owned by the Chinese giant Bytedance, a private startup with a $75bn valuation, admitted to improper data collection in a statement following the settlement and said that it would begin keeping younger users in “age-appropriate TikTok environmentsâ€, where those under 13 would be pushed into a more passive role, able to watch videos, but not post or comment on the platform. Continue reading...
Radical map changes and fun pirate-themed skins give a fresh look to counter strong competition from Apex LegendsThe latest season of Fortnite is now live, introducing a major new volcano area, as well as a host of pirate-themed locations and features.Season 8 kicked off early on Thursday morning with the arrival of a gigantic volcano in the north east of the island, spewing lava along various large channels. This fiery liquid dishes out damage to players who step in it (and makes them bounce), providing a new environmental hazard. Continue reading...
Robin wants to find a way to create a site that doesn’t require coding experienceAs chair of our local allotment association, I’m wondering about setting up a website to provide information and news to new and existing allotmenteers. Can this be done with basic tech knowledge and zero experience of web design or coding? There’s a bewildering number of services offering to host websites, sell domain names, provide easy-to-use templates and so on at a range of prices. What are the catches with the free or cheap services on offer?We have a Facebook group but nobody in the association is very keen to keep this active. RobinIt’s a pity you don’t like the idea of using Facebook because this is generally the quickest and easiest way for a small group to get online. In fact, if an organisation has a physical manifestation – a school, park or church, allotments, a restaurant or so on – then it may already have a Facebook page. If so, you can apply to take it over. If that fails, you can start your own page and compete with it. Continue reading...
From the ‘one-size-fits-men’ approach to smartphone design to the medical trials that are putting women’s lives at risk … this book uses data like a laserThe problem with feminism is that it’s just too familiar. The attention of a jaded public and neophiliac media may have been aroused by #MeToo, with its connotations of youth, sex and celebrity, but for the most part it has drifted recently towards other forms of prejudice, such as transphobia. Unfortunately for women, though, the hoary old problems of discrimination, violence and unpaid labour are still very much with us. We mistake our fatigue about feminism for the exhaustion of patriarchy. A recent large survey revealed that more than two thirds of men in Britain believe that women now enjoy equal opportunities. When the writer and activist Caroline Criado Perez campaigned to have a female historical figure on the back of sterling banknotes, one man responded: “But women are everywhere now!â€It’s a smart strategy, therefore, to invite readers to view this timeworn topic through the revealing lens of data, bringing to light the hidden places where inequality still resides. Criado Perez has assembled a cornucopia of statistics – from how blind auditions have increased the proportion of female players hired by orchestras to nearly 50%, to the good reasons why women take up to 2.3 times as long as men to use the toilet. This is a man’s world, we learn, because those who built it didn’t take gender differences into account. Most offices, we learn, are five degrees too cold for women, because the formula to determine their temperature was developed in the 1960s based on the metabolic resting rate of a 40-year-old, 70kg man; women’s metabolisms are slower. Women in Britain are 50% more likely to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack: heart failure trials generally use male participants. Cars are designed around the body of “Reference Manâ€, so although men are more likely to crash, women involved in collisions are nearly 50% more likely to be seriously hurt. Continue reading...
Groups say no evidence yet of self-harm from craze, but resulting hysteria poses a riskIt is the most talked about viral scare story of the year so far, blamed for child suicides and violent attacks – but experts and charities have warned that the “Momo challenge†is nothing but a “moral panic†spread by adults.Warnings about the supposed Momo challenge suggest that children are being encouraged to kill themselves or commit violent acts after receiving messages on messaging service WhatsApp from users with a profile picture of a distorted image of woman with bulging eyes. Continue reading...
Commissioners demand hard numbers from firm ahead of European parliament electionsFacebook has repeatedly withheld key data on its alleged efforts to clamp down on disinformation ahead of the European elections, the EU’s executive has said.Related: Anti-vaxx propaganda has gone viral on Facebook. Pinterest has a cure Continue reading...
Mentions of game including hidden message comparing Xi Jinping to Winnie-the-Pooh also scrubbed from social media site WeiboTaiwanese horror game Devotion has been removed from sale globally, following a backlash after a hidden message referencing Chinese president Xi Jinping and Winnie-the-Pooh was discovered in-game.Devotion, by the Taiwanese indie developer Red Candle Games, was released on 19 February and was initially popular among horror enthusiasts. However, the discovery of a number of hidden jokes – allegedly critical of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – has ignited a firestorm of online criticism. Continue reading...
‘China’s Apple’ finally lands in the UK with cut-price top-spec phone with a slide-out selfie cameraAfter several years of threatening Xiaomi has finally entered the UK with a series of good-value smartphones starting from £99 including the range-topping Mi Mix 3. But has “China’s Apple†delivered something new, or just another forgettable Chinese smartphone?At first glance the £499 Mi Mix 3 looks fairly boring. The front has a giant display, just like the rest. The back appears shiny glass, just like the rest. It’s got polished metal sides, just like most. But pick up the phone and you realise it’s hiding more than one secret. Continue reading...
Our hard drives are full of all kinds of clutter, but you can’t hold those files in your hands to see if they spark joyLeaving a long-term relationship, you find yourself standing on the precipice of a life yet unlived; all of a sudden the accumulated trinkets and tchotchkes of​ your life together exist only to mock you in your unspoken grief. There’s no better time to get into getting rid of stuff.After she emptied our house of all ​that she wanted, I emptied it a second time, of everything that we had grown to want together. I embraced the spartan wisdom of Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – the self-help manual de rigueur for people who want to want less. Like a barren arctic island basking in my daily hour of sunlight, I proudly embraced an aesthetic of Scandinavian noir-chic, telling anyone within earshot that the drab palette and multiple timber-veneer Arkelstorp side tables were the trappings of a new and more mature me, a me that was as comfortable owning six oversized beige floor lamps and playing at underwear origami as I was being alone. Continue reading...
SEC asks judge to act after car boss allegedly breached deal to pre-approve his messagesThe US financial regulator has asked a judge to hold Tesla’s billionaire boss, Elon Musk, in contempt of court for tweeting misleading information in breach of a deal that saw him fined $20m (£15.2m) for inaccurate tweets last year.The Securities and Exchange Commission said Musk had “once again published inaccurate and material information about Tesla to his over 24 million Twitter followersâ€, according to court papers filed on Monday night. Continue reading...
Device has eight-inch flexible screen that folds all the way round the outside of the phoneThe Chinese smartphone maker Huawei has followed Samsung’s lead by unveiling a super-luxury 5G phone with a folding screen called the Mate X with a price tag of €2,299 (£1,995).Introduced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Sunday, the Mate X has a flexible OLED display that covers both the front and back of the device, and which unfolds outwards to become an eight-inch (20cm) tablet screen. Continue reading...
Sensitive data sent to social media giant from ‘at least 11’ platformsFacebook is battling fresh controversy on both sides of the Atlantic amid claims that it has been receiving highly personal data from third-party apps.The swirl of bad news around the company comes after its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, was criticised for meeting the culture secretary, Jeremy Wright, having refused to appear before an influential parliamentary committee in Westminster. Continue reading...
Fortnite, PUBG, Call of Duty … look closely and these games’ virtual battlefields have much in common. The people who created them explain whyA group of people drop on to a large island. For the next 20 minutes they must search buildings for useful weapons and equipment, before fighting to the death. As the match progresses, the playable area contracts, forcing the competitors closer together. The last person standing wins.This is of course battle royale, a new type of online shooting game currently being enjoyed by over 200 million people across the globe. The current craze started with Day Z: Battle Royale, a modification of the zombie survival game DayZ developed by lone designer Brendan Greene, later updated as PlayerUnknown’s Battle Royale. Its popularity caught the attention of Korean developer Bluehole, who employed Greene to oversee development of a full game. PUBG was launched as a beta in early 2017 and by December, it had 30 million players. Continue reading...
Funded by elites, researchers believe they’re closer than ever to tweaking the human body so we can live forever (or quite a bit longer)China’s first emperor ordered his subjects to search for the elixir of life in a quest for immortality. In 16th century France, nobles would drink gold in a bid to extend their lifespans. Gilgamesh, the Sumerian king at the heart of humanity’s earliest epic poem, found a magic herb, but a snake ate it. In 2015, a woman on the MTV series True Life: I’m Obsessed With Staying Young bathed in pig blood.In 2019, the quest for everlasting life is, largely, though not always, more scientific. Funded by Silicon Valley elites, researchers believe they are closer than ever to tweaking the human body so that we can finally live forever (or quite a bit longer), even as some worry about pseudoscience in the sector. Continue reading...
Order follows report that Facebook may access highly personal information including weight, blood pressure and ovulation statusNew York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, has ordered two state agencies to investigate a media report that Facebook may be accessing far more personal information than previously known from smartphone users, including health and other sensitive data.The directive to New York’s department of state and department of financial services (DFS) came after the Wall Street Journal said testing showed that Facebook collected personal information from other apps on users’ smartphones within seconds of them entering it. Continue reading...
Communications between senior figures, including Mark Zuckerberg, shed new light on data useDocuments posted online Friday appear to be confidential internal Facebook communications that reveal new details of the company’s treatment of user data.About 60 pages of un-redacted exhibits from a lawsuit between Facebook and Six4Three, an app developer, were posted anonymously on GitHub on Friday. They include emails between various Facebook executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and a “highly confidential†2012 memo detailing various policy matters. Continue reading...
Workers say augmented reality headsets provided to US army risk ‘turning warfare into a simulated video game’Microsoft workers are calling on their employer to cancel a $480m contract to provide the US army with augmented reality (AR) headsets, saying they “do not want to become war profiteersâ€.“We did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used,†reads a petition being circulated inside the company, a copy of which was published on Twitter on Friday afternoon. More than 50 employees had signed the letter as of Friday afternoon, according to an employee. Continue reading...
Epic Games will host the year’s biggest video gaming event when the battle royale phenomenon’s top players go head to headThe details of the first Fortnite World Cup have been announced by developer Epic Games.After 10 online qualifiers, the finals will be held in New York from 26-28 July, where the top 100 solo players and the top 50 two-person teams from around the world will compete for a prize pool of more than $30m (£23m). The top solo player at the end of a weekend of battle will earn $3m. Continue reading...
Authors say outdated laws fail to protect vulnerable users from smartphone gamblingSmartphone gambling apps are more dangerous than fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) for people with addiction problems because opportunities to lose money are “just a tap awayâ€, a study suggests.Gambling games on smartphones have surged in popularity in recent years, allowing high-stakes betting within the palm of its users’ hands, with video game-style play making them appear “harmless†and introductory offers providing incentives to sign up. Continue reading...
As pressure mounts on Facebook to explain its role in promoting anti-vaccine misinformation, Pinterest tries different approachOn Wednesday morning, Adam Schiff, the powerful chair of the House intelligence committee, joined journalists around the world in a nascent Twitter meme: he searched “vaccine†on Facebook and posted a screenshot of the results.Schiff’s search results were indeed alarming: autofill suggestions for phrases such as “vaccination re-education discussion forumâ€, a group called “Parents Against Vaccinationâ€, and the page for the National Vaccine Information Center, an official-sounding organization that promotes anti-vaccine propaganda. And while search results on Facebook are personalized to each user, a recent Guardian report found similarly biased results for a brand new account. Continue reading...
Head of sales and marketing Doug Bowser to become COO after popular leader retiresNintendo of America’s president and COO, Reggie Fils-Aime, who has led the company for the past 13 years and become a well-known and liked figure among Nintendo’s fans in the US, is to retire in April, the company has announced. He will be replaced by Doug Bowser, who is currently senior vice-president of sales and marketing.Unlike most video game company executives, who remain at a distance from the actual business of game creation and marketing, Fils-Aime has regularly appeared at events and in Nintendo’s own broadcasts to talk directly to fans. His endearing personality, willingness to engage in goofy stunts and odd turns of phrase have made him a cult figure with Nintendo’s fans: at 2004’s E3 video game conference, he introduced himself on stage with the now-infamous words “My name is Reggie, I’m about kickin’ ass, I’m about takin’ names, and we’re about makin’ games.†Continue reading...
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