Technology | The Guardian

The right and conservative media are using the untraceable ads to push a rightwing agenda and get Donald Trump re-electedIn the weeks leading up to a tightly contested 2018 midterm election in Virginia, a Facebook page called “Wacky Wexton Not” ran an ad that pictured Democratic congressional candidate Jennifer Wexton next to Nazi troops. Another labeled her an “evil socialist”. Yet another referenced Nazi uniforms, stating, “Wexton and her modern day brown shirts. They Are Evil. They Hate America. They Hate You.”You can still have a huge impact by spending very little. Continue reading...

Copper wiring and fibre-to-the-node are not the only issues, some modems are just not up to the job, a new study has foundPoor NBN speeds are often blamed on the government’s decision to scale back the fibre-to-the-premises roll out and switch to the cheaper fibre-to-the-node, but a study commissioned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) proves part of the problem can lie closer to home.Acma commissioned testing lab Enex to test run 43 modems on the market or sold by internet service providers when people sign up for the NBN on a fibre-to-the-node or fibre-to-the-building service. This means that at least for part of the connection, the legacy copper line is used in addition to the new fibre. Continue reading...

My teenage nephew’s life was short and difficult, but the players and developers of Elite Dangerous came together to bring unexpected happiness to his last momentsMy nephew, Michael, died on 22 May 2019. He was 15 years old.He loved his family, tractors, lorries, tanks, spaceships and video games (mostly about tractors, lorries, tanks and spaceships), and confronted every challenge in his short, difficult life with a resolute will that earned him much love and respect. Online in his favourite game, Elite Dangerous by Frontier Developments, he was known as CMDR Michael Holyland. Continue reading...

Steve does not like firms slurping up his data, so wants a device that respects his privacyI have concerns about the likes of Google and Apple slurping up as much info as they can about me from my phone. I’ve tried looking online for alternatives and found mentions of things like /e/, Lineage, Sailfish OS etc, but they assume a level of tech knowledge far above what I have as a layman. So, are there any phones that are 100% free from Google and Apple software and hardware? How easy are such phones to obtain? SteveVery easy. You can pick up a Nokia 105 (2017 edition) for about £15 or a dual-sim Nokia 106 (2018 edition) for about £16. These are only 2G phones but they have built-in FM radios, they can send texts, they are great for making phone calls and they are not based on Google or Apple technologies. A 3G or 4G phone would cost a bit more … Continue reading...

An AI fake text generator that can write paragraphs in a style based on just a sentence has raised concerns about its potential to spread false informationEarlier this month, an unexceptional thread appeared on Reddit announcing that there is a new way “to cook egg white[s] without a frying pan”.As so often happens on this website, which calls itself “the front page of the internet”, this seemingly banal comment inspired a slew of responses. “I’ve never heard of people frying eggs without a frying pan,” one incredulous Redditor replied. “I’m gonna try this,” added another. One particularly enthusiastic commenter even offered to look up the scientific literature on the history of cooking egg whites without a frying pan. Continue reading...

Facebook and Instagram report being ‘back at 100%’ after all three platforms were malfunctioning throughout the dayFacebook said its apps and platforms were “back at 100%” Wednesday evening after outages throughout the day, though some users said they were still experiencing issues.Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were malfunctioning throughout most of the day on Wednesday and into the night. The company said it was working to resolve issues faced by some users while sending media files on its social media platforms and messaging services. Continue reading...

Analysts find system often wrongly identifies people and could breach human rights lawPolice are facing calls to halt the use of facial recognition software to search for suspected criminals in public after independent analysis found matches were only correct in a fifth of cases and the system was likely to break human rights laws.Academics from the University of Essex were granted access to six live trials by the Metropolitan police in Soho, Romford and at the Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, east London. Continue reading...

French government promises tax breaks and subsidies for companies who relocateThe French government has launched a major push to poach British game developers in the wake of Brexit, promising subsidies, tax breaks and loans to creatives who make the move across the Channel.The new campaign, “Join the Game”, sees the French government highlighting the scale of its home-grown games industry, promising similar support to anyone who wants to relocate – and hoping to capitalise on the fact that the UK will shortly not make much sense as the base for “European operations”. Continue reading...

A major urban hub without a big-city feel, San Jose hopes a huge new Google campus will rethink its car-centric sprawl. But critics warn it will steamroll poorer residentsSan Jose is the Bay Area’s most populous city, home to more than a million people and the headquarters of eBay, TiVo and Adobe. It’s a major urban hub for workers at Facebook in nearby Palo Alto and Apple in Mountain View. It is also one of the wealthiest cities in the world, where a salary of six figures only just qualifies as middle class. And yet, tourists rarely visit the city in any numbers. Compared to its northern neighbors, Oakland and San Francisco, the press barely pays it any attention, except when the Sharks make the NHL playoffs. Continue reading...

Legislators say they need time to investigate cryptocurrency and its potential impactThe US Congress has asked Facebook to pause development on its Libra cryptocurrency until lawmakers have had more time to investigate the ramifications of the company’s actions.In a letter from the Democratic head of the house committee on financial services, congresswoman Maxine Waters, and the heads of its subcommittees, the legislators ask the company to “immediately cease implementation plans”. Continue reading...

Financial Conduct Authority says crypto-assets are ill-suited to small investors and very volatileThe UK’s markets regulator has proposed a ban on financial instruments linked to digital cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, warning that such products could cause huge losses for retail consumers unlikely to understand their risks or value.The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said products such as derivatives and exchange-traded notes (ETNs) that reference crypto-assets were “ill-suited” to small investors. Continue reading...

Pioneering computer scientist who became the UK’s foremost software authorityGeorge Felton, who has died aged 98, was the doyen of computer-industry software designers. In the early 1950s the term “software” had not been invented, and for most computer manufacturers responsibility stopped with delivering the hardware – programming the computer was the customer’s problem. Felton helped change that perception.He managed, and largely implemented, the programming scheme for the Ferranti Pegasus computer, first delivered in 1956. It was a programming regimen of unprecedented completeness that made life a great deal easier for computer users. He went on to become the UK computer industry’s foremost software authority. Continue reading...

@CanYouPetTheDog has more than 250,000 followers, including game developers, but most are just digital dog enthusiastsGames often feature dogs but player interaction is generally limited to violent, negative verbs – attack, shoot, kill. Now one wildly popular Twitter account is dedicated to championing the games that allow us to interact positively with our pixelated pals.@CanYouPetTheDog is a journal of record initially inspired by the virtual strays of Ubisoft’s military shooter game, The Division 2, and covers everything from unlikely candidates such as Super Smash Brothers Ultimate to the aptly named Dog Petting Simulator (video above). Continue reading...

UK financial regulator highlights concerns over consumer protection and privacyFacebook’s plans for a global cryptocurrency, Libra, will warrant close scrutiny by governments across the world, according to one of the UK’s most senior financial regulators.Christopher Woolard, the executive director of strategy and competition at the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) highlighted a series of potential issues with the digital currency, from consumer protection and privacy concerns to financial market stability. Continue reading...

UK inquiry looking at whether video-sharing app breaches data protection law

PlayStation 4 (version tested), Xbox One, PC; Frogwares/Bigben Interactive

Company automatically posted pictures of new shirts with offensive Twitter handles on backAdidas UK has come under fire after a social media gambit backfired spectacularly, leading to the company tweeting out pictures of its shirts with racist and offensive slogans on the back.The error came as Adidas launched a social media campaign, #DareToCreate, in conjunction with its release of the new Arsenal home kit. Continue reading...

Cryptocurrency climbed to nearly $14,000 on news social network was launching rivalThe price of bitcoin has fallen back below $10,000, down 30% from last week’s peak of nearly $14,000.Continuing its wild ride, the digital currency dropped to $9,717 on Tuesday, down 8.1% on the day. Last Wednesday, the cryptocurrency shot up to $13,879, breaking through the $12,000 and $13,000 levels in less than two hours. Continue reading...

Mass murders present challenge for search engine to deliver accurate resultsMisinformation is so common after mass shootings that Google has had to tweak its algorithm to compensate, a senior search engineer at the company has revealed.Pandu Nayak, who joined the company 14 years ago to work on its search engine, told the Guardian that mass murders presented an increasing challenge for the search engine to deliver accurate results. Continue reading...

As thousands of tech workers move into Sacramento, the city long considered California’s overlooked middle child is enjoying the attention – for nowPhotographs by Salgu WissmathJoan Didion, the patron saint of California, once managed to summarily dismiss and define her hometown with just one flippant eye-roll of a quote: “Anybody who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento.”California residents have long derided the state’s capital for the crime of being perfectly average. “The midwest of California”, they call it. A cow town. Sacramento’s appeal, it’s often said, is that it’s close to places that are actually appealing, like San Francisco and Tahoe. Continue reading...

Company will match rider donations to Raices, which provides legal aid to immigrantsThe ride-hailing company Lyft will be donating $150,000 in ride credits to support immigration groups across the US in the next six months.The company has also partnered with Raices, a not-for-profit organization providing legal services to immigrants. Through its Round Up & Donate program, Lyft will match rider donations to Raices throughout the month of July, and it will commit to up to $50,000 to the organization in support of their services. Continue reading...

Company policy prohibits praise or support for specific term ‘white nationalism’Facebook’s new policy banning white nationalism from its site has been undercut by the company’s decision to ignore content that does not use the term “white nationalism”, according to an external audit.The auditors, appointed by Facebook in 2018 to oversee its goals of “advancing civil rights on our platform”, said Facebook’s overly narrow implementation of its own rules was hampering moderation. Continue reading...

Fears ‘spaceshippy’ proposals by TfL to make vehicles audible could confuse pedestriansTransport for London has been warned that proposals put forward for a safety feature to make electric buses more audible risk confusing vulnerable road users.TfL has commissioned Aecom to come up with a recognisable noise that will help alert pedestrians and cyclists to the presence of vehicles that can be dangerously quiet. Continue reading...

The Avengers video game has just been unveiled – and has proved divisive, thanks to redesigned characters and a trailer that looked more like a film than a gameBefore this year’s E3, the annual video games event where publishers descend on Los Angeles to unveil and promote their wares for the next year and beyond, anticipation was high for Square Enix’s new Avengers game – an action-adventure for one to four players, in which you can fight as Hulk, Black Widow, Thor and plenty of others. In the year that Endgame grossed more than $2.7bn at the box office worldwide, surely not much could go wrong for a game proffering a personalised Marvel superhero fantasy.As it turned out, however, the Avengers game’s big reveal fell rather flat (and was rather eclipsed by Keanu Reeves, who made a surprise appearance to reveal his top-secret cameo in the forthcoming Cyberpunk 2077 the day before). That is Iron Man, right? Why does he look nothing like Robert Downey Jr? Continue reading...

San Franciscans have long complained that tech workers ruined their city, driving up rents and homelessness and eliminating diversity. Now even the tech workers agreePhotographs by Jason HenryIt was a beautiful winter day in San Francisco, and Zoe was grooving to the soundtrack of the roller-skating musical Xanadu as she rode an e-scooter to work. The 29-year-old tech worker had just passed the Uber building when, without warning, a homeless man jumped into the bike lane with his dog, blocking her path.She slammed on the brakes, flew four feet into the air and landed on the pavement, bleeding. “It was one of those hardening moments where I was like, ‘Even I am being affected,’” she recalled. Continue reading...

Jordan Erica Webber looks at why some people, such as Carlos Maza, say YouTube needs to do more to protect minorities from hate speech. The Guardian’s UK technology editor, Alex Hern, joins in on the conversation.Note added 1 July 2019: Due to a communication mix-up, we erroneously stated in the first airing of this episode that Google, of which YouTube is a subsidiary, did not respond to our request for comment. The company did respond, citing their official blog post on the subject matter of this episode - read it here. Suggestions that Google did not respond have been omitted.

Ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos will become world’s fourth-richest woman but has promised to give away half of awardThe world’s biggest divorce settlement will be made official this week as Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos hands over a 4% stake in the online shopping giant to his soon-to-be ex-wife MacKenzie Bezos.A judge is expected to sign legal papers transferring the Amazon shares – worth $38bn (£29bn) – into MacKenzie Bezos’s name. It is by some distance the largest divorce settlement in history the previous record was $2.5bn paid to Jocelyn Wildenstein when she divorced art dealer Alec Wildenstein in 1999. Continue reading...

Politicians, trade unionists and experts have set out to learn more about the new industrial landscape“We are under the threat of closure all the time,” says Andrew Peters without a hint of fear in his voice.As though repeating himself for the hundredth time, the managing director of Siemens’ Congleton factory in Cheshire explains his workers are battling for survival. Competition in this historic market town at the foothills of the Pennines, where lush green hills rise to the craggy moorlands of the Peak District, is increasingly global. Continue reading...

Quiet, composed and resolutely unshowy… Would you guess this is the world’s bestselling car?Toyota Corolla

The sociologist on how discrimination is embedded in technology – and how we go about building a fairer worldRuha Benjamin is an associate professor of African American studies at Princeton University, and lectures around the intersection of race, justice and technology. She founded the Just Data Lab, which aims to bring together activists, technologists and artists to reassess how data can be used for justice. Her latest book, Race After Technology, looks at how the design of technology can be discriminatory.Where did the motivation to write this book come from?

Unless we start taking online misogyny seriously, we are going to face a future where women may not be able to exist onlineSign up for the Week in Patriarchy, a newsletter​ on feminism and sexism sent every Saturday. Continue reading...

Ours is a desperate hour, we can try to learn to read phones, cynically and powerfullyThe Australian state of Victoria has just banned mobile phones in the classroom. This is a noble intention, but a missed opportunity. Really, they should have smashed the machines, every one.The logic of the state government’s decision is faultless. Mobile phones distract children from classroom learning, and undermine teacher authority. They are poisonous crucibles for bullying, the means of image-based abuse, and a popular media for peer humiliation. Much is being learned about the affect of the palm-held contagion on human cognition – the erasure of skills in basic orientation and location awareness, their addictive appeal to dopamine in the teenage brain, their nasty impact on body confidence and sexual perception. Continue reading...

ACCC report argues for an authority to monitor ads to ensure tech giants do not break anti-competition lawsFacebook and Google are likely to face a strong push for new regulators in Australia to oversee news and advertising on their platforms following the completion of the competition regulator’s inquiry into the tech giants.In December 2017, then-treasurer Scott Morrison directed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to look at the impact that search engines, social media platforms and other online aggregation sites were having on competition in media and advertising. Continue reading...

Ive to remain ‘very involved’ with Apple as he launches new creative companyJony Ive, the chief architect of groundbreaking and distinctive designs from the iMac to the iPhone, announced on Thursday that he is leaving Apple after nearly 30 years.Ive’s departure, which was announced in an exclusive interview with the Financial Times, is sure to set off shock waves in the tech and design worlds, but the 52-year-old Briton will remain involved with Apple. He plans to launch a new creative company called LoveFrom – and said Apple will be his first client. Continue reading...

Move is a shift in efforts to balance its ideological commitment to free expression with rules against harassment and hate speechCall it the Trump rule.Twitter will attach a special label to tweets by major political figures if their content violates the site’s rules but the deleting of them is not in the public interest, the company said on Thursday. Continue reading...

Firm had contested allegations but has reached undisclosed out-of-court settlementsUber has reached out-of-court settlements with two women who alleged they were sexually assaulted by the same driver in what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the UK against the company.The cases were taken by two women who had ordered vehicles using Uber’s app during nights out in Leeds in December 2015, but told police they were sexually assaulted by the driver. They are both five-figure settlements. Continue reading...

Ministers to be put in fictional scenarios after series of hacking incidentsThe EU is to conduct war games to prepare for Russian and Chinese cyber-attacks, in response to a series of incidents that alarmed European governments.Pekka Haavisto, Finland’s foreign minister, said an increase in the prevalence of meddling required a reaction from the 28 member states. During meetings in Helsinki in July and September, EU interior and finance ministers will be asked to manage fictional scenarios. Continue reading...

New functionality automatically deletes history of places users have visitedIt is now slightly easier to opt out of Google’s panopticon, with the introduction of new controls from the search engine to automatically clear your data after a set period of time.By default, Google saves a permanent history of everything a user has searched for, every website they have visited, activity from any other app, site or device that uses Google services, and a record of their physical movements gleaned from using Google Maps or an Android device. Continue reading...

PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC; Codemasters

Thomas needs a device to read A4 PDFs of technical papers that is cheaper than a good laptopI am looking for an e-reader for technical papers. These are usually only available in fixed, non-reflowable, PDF format and sized for printing on A4 paper. They cannot be read on a typical e-reader such as a Kindle because the text is too small. I don’t need the fancy note-taking capabilities of options such as the Remarkable PDF reader. Can you recommend something that doesn’t cost as much as a decent laptop? ThomasThe main attraction of Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) is that people can read the files on almost any kind of device. The corollary is that almost any device will work as a PDF reader, including smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops running almost any operating system. Indeed, so many people need to read PDF files for business and educational research purposes, there are e-readers designed for the task. Continue reading...

Abortion providers in Australia noticed a sharp drop in traffic from Google ads in the last weekGoogle says it has corrected a mistake that blocked ads for abortion providers from appearing in search results in Australia.Abortion clinics in Australia reported a significant drop in traffic in the last week, as first reported by the ABC, with clinics such as the Macquarie Street clinic in Sydney stating their bookings had dropped and the phones had stopped ringing due to their paid ads not appearing in Google search results. Continue reading...

Speaking at Aspen Ideas Festival, Mark Zuckerberg says private companies shouldn’t have ‘final word’ on such decisionsMark Zuckerberg has said Facebook cannot be expected to manage the crisis around election misinformation campaigns on its own.The Facebook CEO, speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Wednesday, said that while the company was focused on questions of election security and interference before the 2020 US presidential election, “those are really hard questions to answer”. Continue reading...

Executive of maker King tells MPs he does not believe there is addiction problemA top executive at the maker of the multibillion dollar Candy Crush Saga game has revealed that more than 9 million players a day spend from between three to six hours or more playing the puzzle game.Alex Dale, a senior executive at its maker, King, also told a Commons select committee investigating immersive and addictive technologies that last year one player spent $2,600 (£2,050) in a single day on the gold bar currency that can be used to propel players faster through the game. Continue reading...

Education secretary says guidance will help guard children against online harmsGuidance on teaching online safety in schools to make children more resilient to catfishing, fake news and other online harms has been announced by the education secretary.The guidelines will combine teaching on relationships, citizenship and computing to help students understand the technology behind targeted advertising, false profiles and other digital issues. Continue reading...

In Ubisoft’s forthcoming game, London has become a surveillance state run by authoritarian populists – and its citizens must come together to fight backThe virtual London of Watch Dogs Legion, the forthcoming sci-fi open world adventure by Ubisoft Montreal, is sometimes uncanny in its accuracy.For instance, while evading the police, and the private military forces working alongside them in the game’s dystopian future, I was able to use my knowledge of the layout of the real world’s Broadcasting House, headquarters of the BBC, to duck down a side street and avoid a drone that had been dogging me since Trafalgar Square. Continue reading...

Dominic Rushe has caught over 11,000 Pokémon, walked 1,841km in Poké-land, and doesn’t plan to stop anytime soon

Chair of Financial Stability Board says company’s plans could spark closer scrutiny of cryptocurrenciesFacebook’s Libra cryptocurrency is facing increasing skepticism from international regulators days after ambitious plans for it were unveiled by the social media company.On Tuesday, Randal Quarles, chair of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), a policy coordinator for G20 countries, said Facebook’s plan to expand into retail payments could lead regulators to take a closer look at such financial instruments. Continue reading...

Interpreting a spoken request isn’t magic, rather it has taken a team of underpaid, subcontracted linguists to make the technology possible“Do you believe in magic?” Google asked attendees of its annual developer conference this May, playing the seminal Lovin’ Spoonful tune as an introduction. Throughout the three-day event, company executives repeatedly answered yes while touting new features of the Google Assistant, the company’s version of Alexa or Siri, that can indeed feel magical. The tool can book you a rental car, tell you what the weather is like at your mother’s house, and even interpret live conversations across 26 languages.But to some of the Google employees responsible for making the Assistant work, the tagline of the conference – “Keep making magic” – obscured a more mundane reality: the technical wizardry relies on massive data sets built by subcontracted human workers earning low wages. Continue reading...

PC, Nintendo Switch; DeadToast Entertainment/Devolver Digital