Technology | The Guardian

A growing group who commute from places as far as eight hours away spend the night in their cars to pick up fares around San Francisco during the dayEvery Saturday morning before the sun rises, 35-year-old Uber driver Sultan Arifi rolls up the sleeping bag in the front seat of his car, places it in the trunk, and prepares for another day of work.He will spend the next 12 hours picking up as many passengers as he can on the streets of San Francisco before returning to a grocery store parking lot in the north of the city to sleep, often for six hours or less, rising as early as he can on Sunday to do it all again. Continue reading...

Drivers to take part in global protest on eve of ride-hailing app’s flotation on stock market

Google Assistant with video calling, security camera, face recognition and hand gesturesGoogle is launching a larger 10in version of its smart display as it attempts to supplant Amazon’s Alexa as the top smartspeaker maker.Announced at Google’s I/O developer conference in California on Tuesday, the new Google Nest Hub Max, which will launch on 15 July costing £219 in the UK. It spearheads the firm’s new push to combine its Nest and other smart home products into one brand. Continue reading...

Model has top-spec camera and software but costs more than £300 less than flagship Pixel 3Google is looking to buck the £1,000-plus smartphone trend by launching a cheaper Pixel 3a smartphone that still offers its top-spec camera and software.Announced at Google’s I/O developer conference in California on Tuesday, the new Pixel 3a and 3a XL Android phones are aimed at the increasingly important mid-range market. Starting at £399, they seek to offer most of what made Google’s £739-plus flagship phones good, but at a significantly reduced cost. Continue reading...

From battles between 9th-century kingdoms to the British Empire colonising the solar system, virtual Britains are remaking historySince Theresa May invoked Article 50, there has been a mystifying surge in video games set in Britain. They come in all shapes and sizes, from Nintendo’s Pokémon Sword and Shield, which riffs on the architecture of Oxbridge and London, to PanicBarn’s anti-Brexit polemic Not Tonight. Most began development long before the EU referendum, but they are useful explorations of national identity at a time when what Britain stands for is hotly contested.Gary Younge has described the Brexit debate as a clash between stories about Britain’s past and our ideas of Britishness. How, then, might these video games help us think about what Britain is today? Continue reading...

Wage cuts and inadequate bonuses mean drivers are left behind as ride-hailing firm prepares for stock market debutA lot of very rich people will get even richer when Uber goes public on 9 May in one of the most anticipated initial public offerings (IPO) to hit the stock market in 2019.Travis Kalanick, Uber’s founder, could see his 8.6% stake in the company valued at close to $8bn if the company is valued at $90bn plus. One early investor, the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, has a $3m stake in the company estimated to now be worth $400m. Uber’s current CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, could make at least $100m from stock options on top of his salary of $45m in 2018. Continue reading...

Streaming service accuses iPhone maker of abusing its dominance of its App StoreApple is bracing itself for a formal antitrust investigation by Brussels after the iPhone maker was accused by the music streaming service Spotify of anti-competitive behaviour.Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner for competition, is said to be poised to launch an inquiry over claims that one of the world’s most valuable companies has behaved unlawfully by abusing the dominant position of its of its app store in the market. Continue reading...

After Google’s decision to scrap its new AI ethics council, Jordan Erica Webber revisits a Chips episode from last summer that looked at Google’s AI objectivesAt the end of March, Google launched a group to advise on ethical issues around artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. It called the group the advanced technology external advisory council.A week later, Google announced it was shutting the council down. A group of Google employees had criticised the inclusion of the leader of what they considered to be a rightwing thinktank and had called for her removal because of previous remarks she had made that were thought to be anti-LGBT and anti-immigrant.

Beyond the leaks and even the data security lies a message about our attitude toward manufacturingThe debate over whether the Chinese telecoms company Huawei should be involved in building Britain’s 5G network has centred on two questions: was the former defence secretary Gavin Williamson the source of the leak from the National Security Council, and would Huawei represent a security threat?These are certainly important questions, but there is a third issue that deserves an airing – namely, why a country that emerged from the second world war with a technological edge in computers and electronics should require the assistance of what is still classified as an emerging economy to construct a crucial piece of national infrastructure. Continue reading...

In a period of loneliness, Olivia Laing turned to Twitter. But then it trapped her…I was a late adopter of technology. In the 1990s, I lived off-grid. If anyone wanted me, they had to call my pager. When it buzzed, I’d walk two miles across fields to ring them back from a dusty phone box on a country lane. Even after I rejoined the modern world I remained a Luddite. I was late to email and so late to laptops that I wrote all my degree coursework by hand. I was years late to Facebook and only bought my first smartphone last summer. Not, on the face of it, the most likely person to become addicted to Twitter.My relationship with it began during a long period of loneliness about a decade ago, in my mid-30s. I was living in New York, away from my family and friends, weathering a miserable break-up. The time-zone difference meant an ongoing glitch in communicating with people back home. Skype, with its two-second time lag and perpetually frozen screens, made me feel further away than ever. I wanted to talk to people who were awake when I was. Continue reading...

Expect a barnstorming debut at the latest tech company listing, yet there is no sign of any profits in the near futureWho wants to invest in a company that has never made a profit, admits it may never do so and is on the brink of war with its global workforce? Probably a fair old chunk of Wall Street, as it happens. This week Uber, the ride-hailing and food delivery service, will put a price on the shares it will issue in the largest tech company float since Facebook in 2012.The San Francisco-based company hopes to raise $10bn in a listing valuing it at $90bn. Dara Khosrowshahi, the chief executive, embarked on a pre-float roadshow last week, touring hotel function rooms from New York to London, addressing halls thronged with investors and asking them to give Uber a five-star rating. Continue reading...

In just 11 years, it has grown from nothing to a $30bn firm. But critics say Airbnb’s rise has come at a huge cost to urban life – and cities across the planet are trying to find ways to rein it in. Rowan Hughes stayed in Airbnb accommodation on holidays for several years before she decided to make some extra cash from her own home in south-east London. When refurbishing the property, she created a room with an en-suite bathroom and its own front door, listing it on the accommodation-sharing platform at the start of this year.Hughes, 37, considered getting a lodger, but using Airbnb offered the flexibility to reclaim the room when her own friends and family came to stay. So far, she has mainly attracted business travellers, who prefer her homely atmosphere and £50-a-night charge to nearby chain hotels where soulless rooms cost significantly more. Continue reading...

As sales of its signature product peak a big change in strategy has emerged in the form of the Apple Watch and AirPodIf Apple wants to prove to doubters that there is life beyond the iPhone, then the wrists and ears of millions of customers could provide the answer.Twelve years from the launch of Steve Jobs’s signature product, Apple wearables – and the services that tie in to them – have emerged as an important component of the tech giant’s profile, accounting for more than a third of sales in the last quarter. Continue reading...

As Bentley celebrates its centenary, the new Continental GT shows that the great marque is showing no signs of its age or of slowing downBentley Continental GT

A decade on from the birth of the crowdfunding platform, Tim Adams talks to cofounder Perry Chen and looks back at some of its greatest campaignsThe idea of Kickstarter first formed in the mind of Perry Chen in 2001. A native New Yorker, Chen was 25, living in New Orleans and working as a musician. He wanted to bring a pair of DJs he loved down to perform during Jazz Fest. He sorted out a venue, organised things with their management, but in the end the event didn’t happen – Chen didn’t have the funds to pay for the show if not enough people turned up. In his frustration, a thought occurred to him: “What if people could go to a website and pledge to buy tickets for a show? And if enough money was pledged, they would be charged and the show would happen. If not, it wouldn’t.”Over the years that followed, Chen held on to that simple idea. He moved back to New York in 2005, still more intent on making music than starting an internet company – he had no background in technology – but the thought wouldn’t go away. He became friends with a music journalist, Yancey Strickler, who got sold on the idea, too. They talked about it with, Charles Adler, a designer and DJ, and the three of them formulated ideas and spoke to mates of mates who knew code or to people who might help fund such a thing. Eventually, in April 2009, eight years after the idea had first come to Chen, the three of them launched their website and waited at their laptops to see if other people thought it was a good idea too. Continue reading...

Is engagement with current affairs key to being a good citizen? Or could an endless torrent of notifications be harming democracy as well as our wellbeing?By Oliver BurkemanThe afternoon of Friday 13 November 2015 was a chilly one in Manhattan, but that only made the atmosphere inside the Old Town Bar, one of the city’s oldest drinking haunts, even cosier than usual. “It’s unpretentious, very warm, a nurturing environment – I regard it with a lot of fondness,” said Adam Greenfield, who was meeting a friend that day over beers and french fries in one of the bar’s wooden booths. “It’s the kind of place you lay down tracks of custom over time.” Greenfield is an expert in urban design, and liable to get more philosophical than most people on subjects such as the appeal of cosy bars. But anyone who has visited the Old Town Bar, or any friendly pub in a busy city, knows what he and his friend were experiencing: restoration, replenishment, repair. “And then our phones started to vibrate.”In Paris, Islamist terrorists had launched a series of coordinated shootings and suicide bombings that would kill 130 people, including 90 attending a concert at the Bataclan theatre. As Greenfield reached for his phone in New York, he recalls, everyone else did the same, and “you could feel the temperature in the room immediately dropping”. Devices throughout the bar buzzed with news alerts from media organisations, as well as notifications from Facebook Safety Check, a new service that used geolocation to identify users in the general vicinity of the Paris attacks, inviting them to inform their friend networks that they were OK. Suddenly, it was as if the walls of the Old Town Bar had become porous – “like a colander, with this high-pressure medium of the outside world spurting through every aperture at once.” Continue reading...

Majority in UK favour stronger regulation of tech companies such as Facebook and TwitterBritons trust social media platforms less than any other major nation and favour stronger regulation of Silicon Valley’s technology companies, according to a survey of 23 countries.More than four in five Britons distrust platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, with other developed nations such as France, Germany and the US not far behind. The attitudes contrast sharply with those in middle-income countries such as Brazil, India and Mexico, where trust is far higher. Continue reading...

Uber defends service, saying governments across Australia have recognised the concept of ridesharingA class action filed on behalf of thousands of taxi and hire-car drivers against Uber alleges the global rideshare company operated illegally in Australia.Maurice Blackburn Lawyers says more than 6,000 people have joined the action, covering drivers across Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia. Continue reading...

The inspired casting of the Deadpool actor transforms this from an average Pokémon movie into fun family fareDetective Pikachu is undoubtedly the best movie ever made… about Pokémon. Nobody who sat through 1998’s awful Pokémon: The First Movie, any subsequent Pokémon films or the more than 1,000 TV episodes, could argue that quality entertainment has been a priority of the children’s monster franchise. But following the colossal success of its Pokémon Go game, the Japanese brand has undergone an expensive Hollywood makeover, and if the results are not exactly groundbreaking, they’ve at least caught the attention of the wider world, mainly thanks to the inspired casting of Ryan Reynolds as Pikachu. Without Reynolds this would be pretty run-of-the-mill; with him it’s a perfectly acceptable family movie. Given the history, that’s a giant leap for Pokémon-kind.Detective Pikachu’s template is clearly Robert Zemeckis’s classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit? – both in its junior film-noir plot and its mix of live-action humans and animated fantasy creatures. The setting is Ryme City, a metropolis where humans and Pokémon live side-by-side, although they cannot understand each others’ languages. For the uninitiated, Pikachu is a furry little yellow creature, capable of delivering powerful electric shocks when his cuteness is called into question. In previous incarnations, Pikachu was a loyal pet who could only say his own name (“Pika Pika!”); now he’s a wisecracking urbanite with a deerstalker hat and a caffeine addiction. Reynolds brings the same comic energy and timing to the role as he did with Deadpool. Continue reading...

The company has struggled to control far-right hate speech on the platform in recent yearsFacebook banned several prominent accounts promoting white nationalism on the platform on Thursday.Accounts barred from Facebook, as well as its subsidiary Instagram, as part of the new enforcement include the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the far-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos and the anti-Muslim figurehead Laura Loomer. Jones was previously banned from Facebook but still had an account on Instagram, which was no longer live as of Thursday. Continue reading...

Legal immunity would squash raft of climate lawsuits launched by cities and counties across the US seeking compensation for damagesMicrosoft has joined a conservative-led group that demands fossil fuel companies be granted legal immunity from attempts to claw back damages from the climate change they helped cause.The stated goals of the Climate Leadership Council (CLC) include a $40-a-ton fee on carbon dioxide emissions in return for the gutting of current climate change regulations and “protecting companies from federal and state tort liability for historic emissions”. Continue reading...

Cutting-edge tech utilising VR and augmented reality is inspiring new narrative forms. And creatives at Sundance festival’s New Frontier are excitedWhat will storytelling look like in 20 years? Will it still be on your television? Will it printed on paper or projected in 3D? Prophesying the future is hard. But, like fortune telling with tea leaves, sometimes the future can be glimpsed in what’s here right now.Last year, Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch – a nihilistic choose-your-own-adventure style film with five main endings – introduced Netflix viewers to a term that has only recently entered the TV lexicon: interactive storytelling. Following up-and-coming developer Stefan as he works tirelessly to create the most complex video game of 1984, Bandersnatch calls on the viewer to make his choices. Do you angrily douse your computer in tea or yell at your dad to blow off steam? Do you visit a therapist or shirk the session to follow a mysterious colleague? Sugar Puffs or Frosties? Bandersnatch is an example of a growing trend in storytelling space: too interactive for traditional TV, not quite interactive enough to be a video game. Continue reading...

Microsoft wants Martin to upgrade Windows 7 to 10 for £120, but what if you can’t afford it or a new PC?Microsoft has just started its bombardment about the end of Windows 7 and upgrading to Windows 10, suggesting that a new device is advisable and including links to its preferred dealers. Apart from the integrity or otherwise of this approach, I don’t think Microsoft has really thought this through, especially in relation to those who simply cannot afford the £120 upgrade even if their current machine is suitable. The fact that people chose to remain with Windows 7 rather than take the free upgrade to Windows 10 surely tells Microsoft that this forced upgrade is a step too far.I’ve been using home computers since the late 1980s but have never felt so cornered and dictated to. MartinMicrosoft has a lot of sympathy for your point of view. Software updates are inevitable, because the world changes, new hardware technologies are developed, new features are needed to cater for new circumstances, and new threats need new defences. That’s true for every operating system in the fast-moving consumer world. Continue reading...

Parliamentary committee grills company representatives over violent and misogynistic abuseTwitter and Facebook have been accused by a parliamentary committee of failing to do enough to protect female MPs and other public figures from violent or misogynistic abuse.Representatives of the two social media giants appeared before the joint human rights committee on Wednesday, where one member – Joanna Cherry, an SNP MP – showed examples of the type of abuse that female MPs faced. Continue reading...

It’s brash, foul-mouthed and has more than one billion guns, but humour just might be the forthcoming game’s greatest weaponMindless violence and inane gags go together like Monty Python and a killer bunny, but when it comes to video games, especially shooters, gritty, po-faced realism tends to win out over comedy. But 2019 is bringing an explosion of comical madness, from the superhero antics of Crackdown 3 to the Mad Max-style mohawks and DayGlo insanity of Rage 2, out in May. The bright, cartoonish Fortnite dominates battle royale, while among competitive shooters, Overwatch brims with colourful personality. Games with guns don’t have to rely on military stylings and a dull colour palette any more.The first Borderlands game, in 2009, was an interesting forerunner to the “looter-shooter” genre Destiny has popularised. This series was one of the earlier first-person shooters to blend bullets and bawdy jokes, bringing humour to a genre that could be pretty dour. Borderlands 3, to be released in September, retains its distinct pop-art style, and in-your-face irreverence. The cell-shaded art has been updated, but carefully maintains its graphic novel-style black edges. Texas-based game developer Gearbox promises “over one billion guns” (they’ll be procedurally generated for virtually limitless weapon possibilities). It’s like a shooter concocted inside the mind of a foul-mouthed 14-year-old. Continue reading...

The social media giant’s latest plan is to use its huge user base to help us find love – and it just might workMark Zuckerberg seems to have landed on a solution to turn around his untrustworthy and “not quite human” public image: playing Cupid.Harking back to its humble beginnings as a tool for ranking strangers’ attractiveness, Facebook has announced a new feature called Secret Crush, wherein users select the friends for whom they carry a torch. If your crush adds you to their list – and with up to nine picks allowed, your odds aren’t bad – Facebook will reveal you to each other and love will assuredly bloom. But if the feeling is not reciprocated, they need never know your identity – just that one of their friends has added them as “a secret crush”. Continue reading...

In a virtual world best known for its crime and violence, gamers are using San Andreas as a safe space to cope with grief, gambling and addictionIt isn’t the tumbling, 360-degree views of San Andreas that command our undivided attention from the top of Mount Chiliad. Nor is it the whir of the cable cars. And it’s not the blanket of mist that engulfs the valley below, nor the implacable sunrise that invades every inch of the towering cliffside’s crevices and chasms.At 2,619 feet above sea level, our group of five is hanging on every word of Craig (not his real name), an unassuming Grand Theft Auto V role-player, as he shares a personal tale about his mother’s alcoholism, how she was knocked down and killed as she left her local pub one evening and how he has struggled with depression and anxiety ever since. Continue reading...

Ministers consider proposals aiming to help consumers identify which products are more and which are less secureSmart TVs and other internet-connected household devices will be made to carry labels setting out how secure they are, under proposals being put forward by the government.Ministers want the labels introduced on a voluntary basis at first, but propose that they are eventually made mandatory. The labels would help consumers identify which products are more and which are less secure. Continue reading...

Quarter marked another quarterly decline in profit and revenue as the company struggled to move beyond the iPhoneApple’s iPhone sales fell 17% in the first three months of the year as the company’s flagship product continued to struggle.The tech company reported revenues of $31.05bn in iPhone revenues for the quarter, the majority of the $58.bn in revenues Apple brought in over the three months. Continue reading...

At annual F8 developer conference, CEO focuses on ‘sense of intimacy’ and unveils plans for payments toolsEven Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t keep a straight face.The Facebook founder and chief executive repeatedly broke out in laughter as he announced a product roadmap for his company’s new “privacy-focused social platform” at its annual developer conference, F8, in San Jose on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Vodafone found security failings in firm’s internet routers a decade agoVodafone discovered security failings in Huawei internet routers used by millions of people almost a decade ago.Europe’s biggest mobile phone operator said on Tuesday that it found “vulnerabilities” in consumer equipment supplied by the Chinese telecoms company to Vodafone Italia between 2009 and 2012. Continue reading...

Biggest fall since October 2012 follows worse-than-expected quarterly results

Is it possible to unsee a movie trailer? To longtime fans, this first look at the forthcoming film points to it being the worst video game tie-in of all timeFor someone who has spent the better part of their adult life arguing the merits of Sonic the Hedgehog, the platforming hero of the Sega Mega Drive era, the trailer for the character’s forthcoming movie is like a 200mph slap in the face. What is so bad about the three-minute teaser unleashed on Tuesday afternoon by Paramount Studios? Where to begin?Is it that Sonic resembles a cheap knock-off Sonic toy your child might win at a fairground stand and then be terrified of (“Daddy, please get it out of my room”)? Is it that Jim Carrey as Dr Robotnik looks like Hercule Poirot crossed with Neo from The Matrix? Is it the laboured idiocy of the whole “save Sonic, save the world” set-up, in which the ratty-looking hedgehog arrives on Earth, sends the US government into a panic, and is befriended by a San Francisco cop played by X-Men actor James Marsden? Why does he have human teeth and nails? Continue reading...

UK telecoms operators targeted over Chinese company’s role in 5G networks

Xbox One, PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch; NetherRealm Studios/Warner Bros Interactive

Deceased may outnumber the living if current growth rates continue, raising questions about what happens to our dataFacebook may eventually have more dead users than living ones.If Facebook continues to grow at its current rate, the site could have 4.9 billion deceased members by 2100, according to a study by Oxford researchers. Even if growth had stopped entirely last year, the study finds, Facebook would be looking at about 1.4 billion dead members by 2100. By 2070, in that scenario, the dead would already outnumber the living. Continue reading...

Theresa May has turned to her national security council to help her decide on whether to allow the Chinese firm Huawei to provide parts of Britain’s 5G network. Guardian reporters Rupert Neate, Alex Hern and Tania Branigan discuss the company at the heart of a diplomatic tussle. Plus, in opinion, David Kogan argues Labour needs clarity on Brexit to have a chance of winning powerWhen the government’s decision to allow Huawei to build parts of Britain’s 5G network leaked from Theresa May’s national security council it set off a furious backlash. Not just that secret cabinet discussions had been revealed, but Britain also found itself in a diplomatic tug of war between the US and China.The US argues the Chinese tech firm is a potential security threat if it has access to critical infrastructure such as 5G networks. Huawei has said the US is creating a smokescreen for protectionism. Continue reading...

Relaunch will let users compare journeys on other services such as tube and busUber is relaunching its London app to include public transport information, allowing users to compare journeys on other services, as well as its private hire cars.The ride-hailing firm said the change, integrating publicly available Transport for London (TfL) live data, would allow its users to make the best choice of journey based on price and time. Continue reading...

Report comes as company faces internal worker turmoil, and a recent $1.7bn fine from the EUGoogle shares slumped on Monday after the company failed to beat analyst predictions, following a year of internal turmoil, privacy concerns, and several international fines.Stock for Alphabet, Google’s parent company, was down 7% in after-hours trading after the company reported first quarter revenue of $36.34bn, lower than the $37.33bn revenue forecast by analysts. The quarter one earnings represent a 17% increase from the same time last year, in which it reported $31.15bn in revenue. Continue reading...

Chinese firm’s 5G equipment described as security risk after council gives partial go-ahead

Streaming service boosted by better-than-expected performance in US and CanadaSpotify has reached 100 million paying subscribers, in a landmark for the music streaming service as it faces competition from major tech firms.The number of users willing to pay for the service soared 32% in the first three months of 2019 compared with a year earlier, Spotify said on Monday. Continue reading...

In Discworld Noir, they help untangle puzzles. In Red Dead Redemption 2, they flesh out the central character. Is the notebook gaming’s most powerful narrative tool?We use notebooks to give form to the intangible, jotting down half-formed ideas and strategies with the aim of corralling them into coherence. We record and reflect on events in our lives, a ritual that narrativises our experiences and makes them comprehensible. Notebooks are a technology, the most ordinary and unspectacular instance of cyborg enhancement – an extension of our memories. And all this makes them a fascinating motif in video games.In Discworld Noir, a little-known adventure game from 1999, you play as a private detective named Lewton, plodding the streets of a hardboiled version of Terry Pratchett’s fictional city-state Ankh-Morpork and investigating murders and disappearances that pay homage to classic noir fiction. Lewton’s greatest asset is his notebook. Here, he writes down the names of suspects, clues, testimony and other key information. This simple device distinguishes Noir from other games in the point-and-click tradition from which it emerged. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber talks to psychologist Pete Etchells about his new book, which explores both his personal relationship with video games and how society views – and could learn to view – this form of entertainment.Pete Etchells didn’t understand why there was such a divide in how society viewed video games. The debates he saw were always heated. One side believed video games were brilliant and had a positive effect on our lives. The other believed they were dangerous on multiple levels for kids and adults alike.So he did some research to try and figure out some of the biggest questions we ask when we discuss video games: do they make us violent? Do they make us anti-social? Are they addictive? The result was a book, which was published at the start of April 2019. Continue reading...

Songwriters and composers look to use new copyright laws to cash in on the boom in online gamingThe global phenomenon Fortnite recently attracted millions of fans to a virtual gig by the real-world DJ Marshmello and now songwriters and composers are seeking to use new copyright laws to receive their cut of royalties from music featured in the booming world of online gaming.PRS for Music, the body that makes sure 140,000 songwriters, composers and publishers in the UK are paid when their music is used across the globe, has revealed that music royalties rose 4.4% to a record £746m last year. Continue reading...

I checked the reviews on a comparison website and they were uniformly glowingI recently sent an iPhone for recycling to PhoneConvert for which they have still not paid me. I found them through a price comparison site, which featured uniformly good reviews. They were slow to respond and after some chasing they got back to me saying the phone was still locked to my iCloud account; this was not the case. When I complained they offered to return the phone; I accepted, but three weeks later I haven’t heard from them. I’ve since checked and found similar stories from customers who sent them devices and were never paid. I’m concerned I will never see the phone or the £70 I was promised.

Government told to make independent decision after move to involve Chinese company sparked criticismChina’s ambassador to the UK has urged the government to ignore external pressure over a politically and diplomatically charged decision to involve the Chinese firm Huawei in building the 5G communications network.In China’s first official comments on the row, Beijing’s ambassador to London, Liu Xiaoming, urged the UK to make the “right decision independently” over the suppliers for the new network. Continue reading...

Vladimir Putin will soon sign the ‘sovereign internet’ bill to allow greater monitoring of traffic. But what are its other consequences?Earlier this year, US officials briefed reporters on an extraordinary operation: they claimed to have launched an offensive cyber-attack against Russia to protect the integrity of the country’s midterm elections.Government hackers from US Cyber Command had pre-emptively cut off the internet to a St Petersburg office building that houses the Internet Research Agency, better known as Russia’s troll factory, to prevent the spread of misinformation on election day in November 2018, US newspapers reported. Continue reading...

It may be a niche interest, but there are few things more pleasurably weird than driving a car into the seaDutton Surf

The counselling psychologist and author of All the Ghosts in the Machine discusses one of the most contentious issues of our ageElaine Kasket is a counselling psychologist based in London. Her first book, All the Ghosts in the Machine: Illusions of Immortality in the Digital Age, examines the ethical and technical issues surrounding our data when we die.If I were to fall under a bus tomorrow, what would happen to my Gmail and Facebook accounts?

An eye-opening historical picture shows how China’s online strategy takes aim at the solidarity of its citizens – aided by US tech companiesA few years ago, Facebook started encouraging users to give it their phone numbers. This, it said, was only for security purposes: a way to confirm one’s login credentials. Now, as a result, anyone can look up a user’s profile via their phone number, Facebook “shares” phone numbers with its other apps (such as Instagram), and advertisers can target those numbers too. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg announced that he had developed a new “vision” for social networking that would be “privacy-focused”, and if you believe that then I have a forecast on the economic benefits of Brexit to sell you. And yet, in certain quarters of tech-savvy international relations , it’s always China that is blamed for betraying the promise of a free and open internet.As James Griffiths’s excellent book on China’s online strategy acknowledges, that promise – the 1990s cyber-utopian vision of an anarchist, autonomous electronic frontier without borders – hardly needed an authoritarian quasi-communist state to betray it. Western corporations did perfectly well on their own. But Griffiths perhaps gives too much credence to that idealistic picture in the first place: the internet was, after all, born from military technology in the first place – the Arpanet, funded by the US Defense Department – and it’s not quite accurate to say, as he does, that it was designed without reference to geography. (The decentralised nature of the military network was precisely a geographical strategy to prevent an enemy from taking it down by destroying any particular node.) Continue reading...