New portability tool will allow users to extract copy of own content posted on social networkInstagram has confirmed it will let users download their personal data, including previously shared photos, videos and messages, as it prepares for the European data regulation GDPR.While its parent company, Facebook, had announced a suite of GDPR controls, which Mark Zuckerberg emphasised during his testimony to Congress this week, Instagram had been quiet on the issue. Continue reading...
There are rumours Sony is about to make a big hardware announcement – but it hasn’t wrung the last drops out of PlayStation 4 yetIt has begun. Rumours regarding a possible successor to the PlayStation 4 have been swirling around tech sites and forums for several days, prompting a few bites from larger news outlets. According to some sources, we could see the PlayStation 5 as soon as this winter.It all started last month, when games writer Marcus Sellars posted a tweet suggesting that PS5 development kits were already being sent out to studios around the world. This was followed last week by subscription-only site Semiaccurate.com claiming to have seen technical details of the machine. According to its report, the PS5 will be based around an AMD accelerated processing unit featuring the manufacturer’s next generation Navi-series GPU and its Zen 2 CPU. Continue reading...
In an exclusive interview, Susan Fowler – the engineer who kickstarted a reckoning on sexual harassment in Silicon Valley – says the industry must end an obscure legal clause that prevents people like her seeking justice
The Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, again faced lengthy questioning from Congress on Wednesday. The key topic of debate was the company's ability to track users in areas such as shopping habits, browsing histories and users' locations. Zuckerberg also revealed that his own personal data had been handed over to the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.
Digital secretary Matt Hancock says social media firm not above the law and must do moreThe digital secretary, Matt Hancock, has warned Facebook that it was not above the law, as he threatened the social media firm with regulation if it failed to protect users’ data more effectively.At what government sources said was a “robust but constructive†meeting, Hancock warned Facebook the relationship between government and social media firms would have to change.
Amazon has filed a patent that could allow its Echo devices to one day listen in on conversations to help with user recommendations. A handy feature or more fodder for conspiracy theories?Should you whisper around your Amazon Echo, lest it whisper back to you?That’s the future suggested by a patent recently filed by the company, which examined the possibility of eavesdropping on conversations held around its voice-activated devices in order to better suggest products or services to users. Continue reading...
Giant cushion used by Facebook CEO in Senate hearing is widely mocked on social mediaThere was worldwide interest in Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance before joint Senate committees on Tuesday, but for some people a less important question than those about Facebook’s use of data and privacy issues was just as pressing - what was Mark Zuckerberg sitting on?The 33-year-old CEO of Facebook appeared to spend the session perched atop a large cushion, swiftly dubbed a “booster seat†by social media users.
WebAuthn will eliminate need for passwords by moving to methods of authentication such as biometrics, says web standards controllerA new web standard is expected to kill passwords, meaning users will no longer have to remember difficult logins for each and every website or service they use.
Beautiful screen, excellent keyboard, great trackpad – Huawei’s new machine shows it has what it takes to build a great laptopThe MateBook X Pro is Huawei’s more powerful follow up to last year’s excellent MateBook X, and as the name might imply it is aimed squarely at Apple’s MacBook Pro.
Facebook’s CEO appeared before Congress in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal to address concerns over users’ dataMark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive, warned on Tuesday of an online propaganda “arms race†with Russia and vowed that fighting interference in elections around the world is now his top priority.
by Richard Partington Economics correspondent on (#3MCAM)
Barclays analysts compare speculation in digital currency to spread of infectious diseaseThe rise of bitcoin has comparisons with the spread of an infectious disease, according to economists who argue the digital currency may have peaked in value as more consumers become immune to its appeal.Analysts at Barclays said the soaring value of the digital currency last year, when prices rose by more than 900%, was helped by new buyers being “infected†by the euphoria surrounding bitcoin. The price has since crashed from almost $20,000 before Christmas to less than $7,000.
The video for Despacito, which had more than five billion views, was defaced and temporarily removedA number of high-profile music videos disappeared from YouTube and had their titles and hold images defaced, after the video streaming website was targeted by hackers.Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s Despacito is the most viewed YouTube video of all time, with more than 5bn views, but temporarily disappeared from the site and had its hold image replaced by a photograph of a masked gang holding guns. Hackers calling themselves Prosox and Kuroi’sh replaced the description beneath the video with: “Free Palestine.†Continue reading...
Software update disables touchscreen on £700-plus smartphones that have not had their screens repaired by AppleApple’s latest iOS 11.3 software update is causing iPhone 8 devices with third-party repaired screens to stop working.
Most of 310,000 Australians affected by breach did not directly consent to harvesting of their personal detailsOnly 53 Australians used a Facebook quiz app responsible for the Cambridge Analytica data breach, meaning the vast majority of 310,000 affected citizens did not directly consent to the harvesting of their personal details.
The founders of Teacher Tapp, which surveys every aspect of teachers’ lives, hope their data can help improve retentionDoes it matter how often teachers go to the pub together, who they are in relationships with, or whether they do marking in the Easter holidays?Such quirky details about the hidden lives of the people who educate our children could be dismissed as irrelevant. However, that would be a mistake, say the founders of a new app designed to capture a real-time picture of the habits and motivation of the workforce of nearly half a million. Prof Becky Allen and Laura McInerney, a Guardian columnist, are former teachers who believe that understanding more about teachers’ lives could be the key to keeping them in the profession for longer. That is why they got together with a physics teacher, Alex Weatherall, to develop an app that gets daily insights into what teachers are doing and how they are feeling. Continue reading...
Tech company is alerting everyone affected as the country’s privacy chief demands to know if Cambridge Analytica used the informationTen New Zealanders who downloaded an app on Facebook could have exposed up to 63,714 of their compatriots to the data mining tactics of Cambridge Analytica.Facebook has told the country’s privacy commissioner that it is in the process of alerting New Zealanders who were affected by the breach, which occurred when ten users downloaded a personality quiz app. Continue reading...
by Ewen MacAskill Defence and intelligence correspond on (#3MB02)
National Cyber Security Centre finds increase in criminal online attacks against UK firms in 2017Criminal cyber-attacks on UK businesses increased last year, according to the annual report of the National Cyber Security Centre.Firms face a growing threat from ransomware, data breaches and weaknesses in the supply chain, according to the report, published on Tuesday. Emerging threats include theft from cloud storage, which the NCSC argues too many businesses put their faith in. Continue reading...
Lauren Sager Weinstein, Transport for London’s chief data officer, explains what happens to its customers’ information. Plus Jon Baines on the General Data Protection RegulationWe take protecting the privacy of our customers extremely seriously (How to keep data truly safe? Don’t collect it in the first place, 4 April). Aside from cases where it is essential that we know the identity of a holder of an Oyster card – such as when checking customers are entitled for free or discounted travel – there is no requirement for anyone to share their personal details with us.For all cards, including those Oyster cards where proof of identity is required, we deliberately break the link in our systems between the card and the journeys made with it as soon as that link is no longer required for customer support, such as processing fare refunds. Continue reading...
Former hacktivists say action by Kemi Badenoch breaches Computer Misuse Act and question potential for prosecution or reformFormer hacktivists have reacted with bafflement after the Conservative MP Kemi Badenoch admitted that she hacked Harriet Harman’s website in 2008.Badenoch confessed to the hack, which carried a jail sentence of up to five years at the time she acted, in response to a question about the “naughtiest†thing she had done. Continue reading...
Countries spending billions on ‘third revolution in warfare’ as UN debates regulation of AI-powered weaponsThey will be “weapons of terror, used by terrorists and rogue states against civilian populations. Unlike human soldiers, they will follow any orders however evil,†says Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales, Australia.
Studios are keener than ever to take a cut from this multibillion-dollar industry – but even the best games rarely inspire good filmsAs recent efforts – Tomb Raider, Assassin’s Creed, Warcraft – continue to show, video games rarely make great movies. If ever. Dwayne Johnson’s new epic Rampage might change all this, just as giant, genetically modified wolves might fly, but the source material was hardly that compelling to start with, partly because it was already a mish-mash of movie tropes. In the original Rampage arcade game, you could be King Kong, Godzilla or a werewolf and you basically had to re-enact a city-trashing scene out of a monster movie. Now, see the movie of the game of the movie!To turn it around, however, games already have taken over the movies. Look at Johnson’s last mega-hit, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. It wasn’t based on an existing game(nor was it a feature-length Guns N’ Roses song, which was a disappointment to some), but Jumanji did involve characters being sucked into a video game world, for all manner of entertaining body-swap action-adventure. One of the reasons Jumanji worked so well was because it was structured like a game. The set-up was crystal-clear: to get back home, the characters had to go through various levels, collect clues and Get the Thing (in this case, the “Jaguar’s eyeâ€). Furthermore, the characters had their avatar’s skills and three lives each. As a movie targeted at younger viewers, it worked a treat. You knew who the characters were, where they were going and what they had to do to “winâ€. So many family movies forget this – A Wrinkle in Time, for instance. Continue reading...
Complaint filed with US watchdog urges sanctions for Google allegedly failing to comply with child protection laws around data collection and adsA coalition of 23 child advocacy, consumer and privacy groups have filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission alleging that Google is violating child protection laws by collecting personal data of and advertising to those aged under 13.
A new generation of machines is being created, often with complex purposes in mindLast week, Nasa announced that it is developing robotic bees to gather information about areas of Mars that wouldn’t be accessible to a Mars rover. The bots could detect, for example, methane, a possible sign of life. Continue reading...
Iranian IT minister says warning that displayed US flag was part of attack that also affected Europe, India and the USHackers have attacked networks in a number of countries including data centres in Iran, where they left the image of a US flag on screens along with a warning: “Don’t mess with our electionsâ€, the Iranian IT ministry said on Saturday.“The attack apparently affected 200,000 router switches across the world in a widespread attack, including 3,500 switches in our country,†the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology said in a statement carried by Iran’s official news agency IRNA. Continue reading...
Mark Zuckerberg will be hauled before Congress this week. He’ll apologise – but his company doesn’t know how to change its brand of ‘surveillance capitalism’Ponder this … and weep. The United States, theoretically a mature democracy of 327 million souls, is ruled by a 71-year-old unstable narcissist with a serious social media habit. And the lawmakers of this republic have hauled up before them a 34-year-old white male, one Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, the sole and impregnable ruler of a virtual country of about 2.2 billion people who stands accused of unwittingly facilitating the election of said narcissist by allowing Russian agents and other bad actors to exploit the surveillance apparatus of his – Zuckerberg’s – virtual state.How did we get into this preposterous mess? Answering this question requires an understanding of (among other things) the peculiar nature of digital technology, the ideology of Silicon Valley, the astonishing political naivety of Zuckerberg, the ethical tunnel vision of software engineers and – most important – the business model that has come to be known as “surveillance capitalismâ€. Continue reading...
Direct action planned in protest against company’s involvement in Cambridge Analytica scandalFacebook users are being urged to stop using the social media platform for one day in protest against the company’s involvement in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The Faceblock campaign has been planned to coincide with Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance before US Congress on Wednesday, where the Facebook chief executive will be testifying about data privacy issues.The international group of campaigners is asking people to take part in a day of online protest by refusing to use Facebook’s platforms and apps, including Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, for 24 hours. Continue reading...
Moved intended to stall spread of false information and ‘prevent future abuse in elections’Facebook is stepping up its efforts to fight fake news and political misinformation, with new controls intended to ensure authenticity and transparency among advertisers and publishers on the site.CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post shortly after the moves were announced: “These steps by themselves won’t stop all people trying to game the system. But they will make it a lot harder for anyone to do what the Russians did during the 2016 election and use fake accounts and pages to run ads.†He also threw his company’s support behind the Honest Ads Act, a US Senate bill: “Election interference is a problem that’s bigger than any one platform ... This will help raise the bar for all political advertising online.†Continue reading...
Taping over the lens is just the first step in keeping online snoopers out of your businessHere is what the former FBI director James Comey said when he was asked back in September 2016 if he covered his laptop’s webcam with tape.“Heck yeah, heck yeah. Also, I get mocked for a lot of things, and I am much mocked for that, but I hope people lock their cars … lock your doors at night. I have an alarm system, if you have an alarm system you should use it, I use mine.†Continue reading...
This week’s edition of Upside looks at experimental projects that offer a peek into the futureNew technologies are often touted as the solutions to our problems, as well as decried as the cause of all manner of social ills. We are told that increasing automation of jobs will mean more of us spending less time working, with ever greater responsibility handed over to software, sensors and the cloud.This week we visited some experimental projects that could offer a glimpse of our future, to see how people are grappling with the possibilities and problems of technological innovation. Continue reading...
The game-makers behind studio Vague Pixels used to squeeze in coding after their homework. Now they’re hoping that their frenetic action game Alter Army takes offJaipur has a population of around three million people, but only one video game development studio – or so Vague Pixels claims. Founders Mridul Bansal and Mridul Pancholi are set to release their debut game, the frenetically paced action platformer Alter Army, at the end of the month. An early build of the game shows enormous potential – it’s a little rough-hewn, as you’d expect from an unfinished version, but it’s energetic, characterful and boasts an entertainingly hard challenge. What makes it more remarkable is that it’s been created in less than two years by 16-year-olds with no game design experience.In fact, as Bansal explains to me over a patchy Skype connection, the pair were barely 14 when they started working together. He had recently moved schools when he met Pancholi; they were classmates, but rarely spoke. “One day we heard each other talking about computers and game development, and we thought we should discuss it,†Bansal recalls. “I went to his house and we decided to start a project so we could polish our skills.†Continue reading...
by Presented by Jordan Erica Webber and produced by D on (#3M23Z)
An OECD report suggests robots could soon take 66m jobs from humans. That isn’t as bad as previously expected. But who will be first to lose their jobs to machines?Subscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook, Twitter or email us at podcasts@theguardian.comA new report from the OECD – the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development – looked at the extent to which jobs may soon be automated in 32 different countries, and found that 66 million people are at risk of losing their job to machines. That means 14% of jobs currently held by humans could soon be managed by robots. The level of risk varies from industry to industry and country to country, but in the UK about 10% of jobs are considered at high risk. Continue reading...
Company acknowledges revelations in CNBC report but says project was put on hold, with no data ‘shared or analyzed’Facebook was in discussions with major medical institutions about sharing user and patient data for a research project, the social media company admitted on Thursday, after revelations in a news report .The report, from CNBC, said the proposed plan included using a process to match data for individuals in both sets, which would be anonymized, to research how such information sharing could improve individual patient care. Continue reading...
Groups that have worked with Facebook to flag dangerous content reveal it took more than four days for it to respond when messages started circulatingA consortium of civil society, human rights and monitoring groups in Myanmar have criticised Mark Zuckerberg’s response to the spread of hate speech on the platform and accused the social media giant of failing to act quickly enough to curtail dangerous messages that incited violence inside the country.Earlier this week, Zuckerberg told Vox Facebook’s systems had detected a pair of chain letters spreading around Myanmar on Facebook Messenger last year. One warned of an imminent attack by Muslims on 11 September. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian