The inventor, entrepreneur and much-ridiculed rich person thinks his wealth is used as a stick to beat him. People with less than $20bn disagree …Name: The billionaire’s curse.Age: Of the moment. Continue reading...
Some of most popular users appear to lose millions of followers after crackdownEgos have been bruised on Twitter after the social network initiated a change to how it tracks followers that saw some of the most popular users lose millions from their count.Following the change on Friday, which removes from the count accounts that have been suspended or locked by Twitter for abuse, some of the most popular users had hundreds of thousands, or millions, fewer followers than they had a day before. Continue reading...
Don’t outsource the job of managing your time and attention to Apple or GoogleHot on the heels of “smart emailâ€, grumbled about in this column recently, comes “digital wellnessâ€, the umbrella term for trying to fix our addiction to technology – and its grim effects on our health, productivity and politics – by means of that technology itself. One hugely popular app, Forest, displays a tree on your phone when you put it down, which then gradually begins to grow, only to die if you pick it back up. Android phones have Wind Down, which causes the screen to fade slowly to black and white as bedtime approaches; then, last month, Apple announced features designed to help you monitor, and limit, the time you spend staring open-mouthed into its range of glass rectangles. Using fire to fight fire in this fashion is an appealing thought. And given the endless data these firms collect about how we use their products, nobody could be better placed to help us use them more healthily, if they chose to.And yet, increasingly, digital wellness triggers in me a response reminiscent of those screaming authoritarians you encounter in bad American reality TV shows, about wayward teenagers sent to the Colorado wilderness to learn self-discipline through self-love. If you hate how much you use your phone, just stop using your phone so much! Relying on Big Tech to help you do so is a problem, for one thing, because of the obvious conflict of interest. (However concerned for your wellbeing they might seem, Apple and Google need you to need their products.) But it’s also infantilising, as the author Cal Newport explained on his blog. “I’m a grown man,†he wrote. “If I’m checking my phone every five minutes, or playing video games instead of paying attention to my kids, I don’t need an animation of a dying tree to nudge me toward better habits. I need someone I respect to knock the stupid thing out of my hand and say, ‘Get your act together.’ †Continue reading...
by Presented by Jordan Erica Webber and produced by D on (#3TTH6)
David E Sanger, national security correspondent for the New York Times, speaks about his new book: The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber AgeSubscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, AudioBoom, Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook, Twitter or email us at chipspodcast@theguardian.com.Throughout history, the weapon of choice for warring nations has evolved. Soon after the invention of the aeroplane at the start of the 20th century, countries involved in the various conflicts that battered the globe started to use them to drop bombs from the sky. Continue reading...
Updated machines have hands-free Siri, the latest processors, True Tone displays and a quieter keyboardApple has updated its MacBook Pro laptops with new processors, keyboards and display technology, and hands-free Siri.The update is slightly more than an expected specifications improvement for Apple’s popular “Pro†laptops. Both the 13-inch and 15in MacBook Pros with Touch Bar will now come equipped with the latest eighth-generation Intel Core i5, i7 and i9 processors, bringing them into line with competition from Windows PC manufacturers such as Huawei, Dell and others. Continue reading...
Lego The Incredibles is the latest video game to help introduce the brand to a new generation of children – one 3D block at a timeFor some parents, the idea of kids sitting down in front of a Lego-branded video game might be baffling: isn’t the point of Lego that it’s not on a screen? But the mega-success of Minecraft – based on building things out of blocks with different colours and properties – proves that Lego and video games have been influencing each other for at least a decade. There are now Minecraft-branded Lego sets: a real-life toy influencing a game that becomes a real-life toy again.Many official Lego games have come out of a cross-pollination. Since the mid-90s there have been more than 50 of them, the most recent being this week’s Lego The Incredibles, based on the Pixar film. Video games aren’t replacing traditional ways of playing with the toy, but they’re providing new twists on Lego’s ethos: the ability for children to be creative in their play. Continue reading...
Company lays off Pittsburgh drivers as it prepares to return to roads with a smaller fleetUber laid off 100 of its self-driving car backup drivers in Pittsburgh on Wednesday as it scales back its testing in the wake of its fatal crash in March.The ride-hailing firm made 55 new mission specialist positions available to replace them, according to a report by Quartz, with the intention of returning to on-the-road testing but with a reduced fleet of cars. Continue reading...
From picking up the phone every seven minutes to realising that Safari is my main time sink, Apple’s Screen Time tools revealed more than I expectedHow many times do you pick up and interact with your phone in a week? More than 500 times? How about the sheer number of notifications you get? It might number in the thousands.
Firm removes category, which affected 65,000 people, from ad tools, following safety fearsFacebook’s advertising tools algorithmically labelled 65,000 Russians as interested in treason, potentially putting them at risk from the repressive state, until the company removed the category, following inquiries from journalists.The labelling raises new concerns over data-driven profiling and targeting of users on the website, which has already faced criticism for the same tool algorithmically inferring information about users’ race, sexuality and political views despite data protection legislation requiring explicit consent to hold such information. Continue reading...
Locked accounts will be removed from follower numbers, as company targets spread of abuse and misinformationTwitter users will see a drop in their follower counts this week as the company clamps down on “problematic†accounts including those that have been hijacked to spread abuse, misinformation and propaganda.Starting on Wednesday, Twitter will remove all locked accounts from people’s follower numbers. Most people will see a change of “four followers or fewer†but accounts with larger followings will experience a “more significant dropâ€, the company said. Continue reading...
Information Commissioner’s Office inquiry into AggregateIQ is one of many started by ICO in response to data misuse claimsThe Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating the relationship between the Canadian data firm AggregateIQ, Vote Leave and a number of other leave campaigns, the body has said in a report published on Wednesday.Related: Labour bought data on 1m mothers and their children Continue reading...
Liane Hornsey resigned in an email to staff after just 18 months in the roleUber’s head of HR has resigned after only 18 months following an investigation into how she handled allegations of racial discrimination at the taxi firm.Liane Hornsey, the firm’s chief people officer, resigned in an email to staff on Tuesday, after an investigation into accusations from anonymous whistleblowers that she had systematically dismissed internal complaints of racial discrimination. Continue reading...
Firm fined £500,000 for lack of transparency and failing to protect users’ informationFacebook is to be fined £500,000, the maximum amount possible, for its part in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the information commissioner has announced.The fine is for two breaches of the Data Protection Act. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) concluded that Facebook failed to safeguard its users’ information and that it failed to be transparent about how that data was harvested by others. Continue reading...
Elon Musk says first facility outside the US will build 500,000 cars a yearTesla is to open a new electric car production plant in Shanghai, its first outside the US, chief executive Elon Musk said from the city on Tuesday.The new auto plant is slated to produce 500,000 cars a year, taking Tesla’s total global manufacturing capacity to 1m vehicles a year. Most automotive factories are tooled to produce 200,000 to 300,000 vehicles a year. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Self-flying vehicle firms got $2m last year, as US military envisions taxis as more Blade Runner than Back to the FutureTwo start-ups leading the race to build the first self-flying taxis are using money from the US military.Last year, Kitty Hawk and Joby Aviation received a total of nearly $2m from the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx), a Pentagon organization founded to help America’s military make faster use of emerging technologies. Neither company, nor the DIUx, disclosed the funding at the time. Continue reading...
New 10in Windows 10 tablet is half the cost of Surface Pro, aimed at Apple’s iPad and Google’s Chromebooks but running OfficeMicrosoft has unveiled its direct challenge to Apple’s iPad, the cheaper, smaller and lighter Surface Go 2-in-1 Windows 10 tablet.
Less than a year after launching, Ofo bikes and Reddy Go are both pulling outThe wheels are falling off Australia’s once burgeoning share bike economy, after two more companies announced they were pulling out of capital city markets.China-owned Ofo bikes and the Australian company Reddy Go were both greeted as part of the shift towards bike sharing when they launched in Australia last year. Ofo is the largest bike-sharing company in the world, and has been labelled the “Uber for bikesâ€. Continue reading...
Site to promote videos and articles by vetted sources amid rash of conspiracy theoriesYouTube is investing $25m (£18.8m) in journalism on its platform, focusing on helping news organisations produce online videos and changing its site to better support trusted news providers.As well as the investment, which will be partly used to fund a working group to spearhead news product features, the company is changing how its site works to “make authoritative sources readily accessibleâ€. Continue reading...
Result puts Britain in bottom third of EU countries and below MadagascarThe UK has slipped to 35th place in an annual league table of global broadband speeds, putting it in the bottom third of EU countries and below the likes of Madagascar and Bulgaria.An analysis of more than 160m broadband speed tests conducted across 200 countries revealed Singapore was once again the world’s fastest country, followed by Sweden, Denmark and Norway, while Yemen came last.
Electronics manufacturers know exactly how big wall outlets are – so why do they make plugs so big that they obscure more than one?Name: Plugspreading.Age: It has been creeping up on us for some years now. Continue reading...
The social media giant has assembled a team of experts to spot abuses and protect the company’s reputation. But what do security experts think?Technology companies like to talk about the huge benign changes their products will bring about. Take Facebook, with its mission to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer togetherâ€. Or Google, which wants to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and usefulâ€. Microsoft hopes to “empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve moreâ€. Even Snapchat, which opens its corporate bio with the humble claim that “Snap Inc is a camera companyâ€, can’t help but note: “We contribute to human progress by empowering people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.â€Such statements demonstrate the scale of ambition that is the norm among technology’s largest companies. It is rare, however, to find much time or effort dedicated to the unplanned consequences of world-beating new technologies. Continue reading...
The ground on which politics happens has changed – yet our political language has not kept upA Russian-fed misinformation campaign across Facebook and Twitter, plus powerful data-targeting techniques pioneered by the Obama campaign, helped propel Donald Trump into the White House.
Ryker Gamble, Alexey Lyakh and Megan Scraper were vloggers for High On Life, an extreme travel channelThree young YouTube stars have died at a waterfall in Canada.Police said Ryker Gamble, Alexey Lyakh and Megan Scraper were swimming at the top of Shannon Falls in British Columbia on Tuesday when they “slipped and fell into a pool 30 metres belowâ€. Continue reading...
Psychologist Michal Kosinski says artificial intelligence can detect your sexuality and politics just by looking at your face. What if he’s right?Vladimir Putin was not in attendance, but his loyal lieutenants were. On 14 July last year, the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, and several members of his cabinet convened in an office building on the outskirts of Moscow. On to the stage stepped a boyish-looking psychologist, Michal Kosinski, who had been flown from the city centre by helicopter to share his research. “There was Lavrov, in the first row,†he recalls several months later, referring to Russia’s foreign minister. “You know, a guy who starts wars and takes over countries.†Kosinski, a 36-year-old assistant professor of organisational behaviour at Stanford University, was flattered that the Russian cabinet would gather to listen to him talk. “Those guys strike me as one of the most competent and well-informed groups,†he tells me. “They did their homework. They read my stuff.â€Kosinski’s “stuff†includes groundbreaking research into technology, mass persuasion and artificial intelligence (AI) – research that inspired the creation of the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica. Five years ago, while a graduate student at Cambridge University, he showed how even benign activity on Facebook could reveal personality traits – a discovery that was later exploited by the data-analytics firm that helped put Donald Trump in the White House. Continue reading...
ANU has spent several months fighting off a threat to its systems, which some reports say can be traced to ChinaAustralia’s top-ranked university says it has spent several months fighting off a threat to its computer systems, which some media reports say have been compromised by Chinese hackers.Repeated allegations of hacking and internet spying have contributed to a recent chill in Sino-Australian relations, just as they have long strained ties between China and the United States. Continue reading...
by Presented by Jordan Erica Webber and produced by D on (#3TCQR)
Academics and scientists are struggling to find ways to tackle the latest form of online sexual abuseSubscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, AudioBoom, Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook, Twitter or email us at chipspodcast@theguardian.com.At the end of 2017 and into 2018, the media became aware of a disturbing trend taking hold in certain online communities: deepfake pornography. A master manipulator can create a convincing video in mere hours. Continue reading...
Using what one expert calls a ‘Wizard of Oz technique’, some companies keep their reliance on humans a secret from investorsIt’s hard to build a service powered by artificial intelligence. So hard, in fact, that some startups have worked out it’s cheaper and easier to get humans to behave like robots than it is to get machines to behave like humans.“Using a human to do the job lets you skip over a load of technical and business development challenges. It doesn’t scale, obviously, but it allows you to build something and skip the hard part early on,†said Gregory Koberger, CEO of ReadMe, who says he has come across a lot of “pseudo-AIsâ€. Continue reading...
Scouring photos for a conversation starter has become standard on Tinder, as a woman’s viral post about toilet paper provesThe perfect Tinder photo: yes, it has to get you on your good side and disguise that double chin, but is there more to it than just looking good?Hana Michels, a comedian and writer from LA, who shared a screengrab of her Tinder profile to Twitter this week, found that a lot of men whom she matched with weren’t interested in her at all but in her toilet paper holder. She explained that she had been chastised by no fewer than 23 men in a year for the direction in which her toilet paper was facing – a small detail in the background of the photo. Continue reading...
Barbara is constantly being interrupted by pop-ups about the new GDPR. Is there anything she can do?Because of GDPR, it feels as though my internet access – my access to information – is now more restricted. I am constantly being interrupted by pop-ups that want me to agree to the website’s privacy policy, use of my data and so on, in order to “personalise my experienceâ€. After recent revelations about unauthorised use of personal data, I’m wary of agreeing without checking what their proposals are, but I often just close the page because there are too many options and it’s too much of a bother. Am I being too paranoid? BarbaraThe General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) only came into force on 25 May and it will take a while for some websites to adapt. Breaking the rules can result in fines of up to €20m, so at this point, information providers are probably more paranoid than you are. Continue reading...
by Mark Sweney in London and Jennifer Rankin in Bruss on (#3TA7P)
Controversial new law that critics claimed threatened internet freedom is rejectedGoogle, YouTube and Facebook could escape having to make billions in payouts to press publishers, record labels and artists after EU lawmakers voted to reject proposed changes to copyright rules that aimed to make the tech companies share more of their revenues.The proposed new rules, which have been going through the European parliament for almost two years, have sparked an increasingly bitter battle between the internet giants and owners and creators of content, with both sides ferociously lobbying their cause. Continue reading...
Internet entrepreneur and Megaupload founder to appeal to supreme court after ruling on intellectual property rights upheldNew Zealand’s court of appeal has ruled that internet entrepreneur and Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom could be extradited to the United States to face racketeering and criminal copyright charges.
Consumer group says policies of Facebook, Amazon and Google are vague and unclearPrivacy policies from companies including Facebook, Google and Amazon don’t fully meet the requirements of GDPR, according to the pan-European consumer group BEUC.An analysis of policies from 14 of the largest internet companies shows they use unclear language, claim “potentially problematic†rights, and provide insufficient information for users to judge what they are agreeing to. Continue reading...
Morris Minors | Bra technique | Football comes home | CO2 shortageFor those who own a Morris Minor (Letters, passim), may I offer the following advice. If you’re stuck in the back blocks of Morocco because of fuel vaporisation, as two hippies were in 1970, I remember applying the offending pipe with the contents of an aerosol can of foot odour spray to cool it down. Worked a treat. We then proceeded to Marrakech, of which I remember little.
Laser light shows and drone displays will replace fireworks across drought-stricken areas of the western US on Independence DayThe night sky above Aspen will light up with a patriotic display this Fourth of July as always – just not with the usual fireworks.
With the new series starting we would like to hear your stories as John and John go in search for the country’s real politicsAs part of a new series of Anywhere But Westminster videos, John Harris and John Domokos are exploring the impact of automation, the internet, and technology in general on the workplace and the high street.
NBN operator could be punished for lengthy repair times and missed appointments, party saysThe operator of the national broadband network could be fined for lengthy repair times and missed appointments under a Labor proposal to establish a wholesale service guarantee. Continue reading...
A UK-based startup has developed a geocoding tool that could revolutionise how we find places, from a remote African village dwelling to your tent at a rock festivalIn common with perhaps 15 million South Africans, Eunice Sewaphe does not have a street address. Her two-room house is in a village called Relela, in a verdant, hilly region of the Limpopo province, five hours’ drive north-east of Johannesburg. If you visited Relela, you might be struck by several things the village lacks – modern sanitation, decent roads, reliable electricity – before you were struck by a lack of street names or house numbers. But living essentially off-map has considerable consequence for people like Eunice. It makes it tough to get a bank account, hard to register to vote, difficult to apply for a job or even receive a letter. For the moment, though, those ongoing concerns are eclipsed by another, larger anxiety. Eunice Sewaphe is nine months pregnant – her first child is due in two days’ time – and she is not quite sure, without an address, how she will get to hospital.Sitting in the sun with Eunice and her neighbours outside her house, in a yard in which chickens peck in the red dirt, she explained to me, somewhat hesitantly, her current plan for the imminent arrival. The nearest hospital, Van Velden, in the town of Tzaneen, is 40 minutes away by car. When Eunice goes into labour, she will have to somehow get to the main road a couple of miles away in order to find a taxi, for which she and her husband have been saving up a few rand a week. If there are complications, or if the baby arrives at night, she may need an ambulance. But since no ambulance could find her house without an address, this will again necessitate her getting out to the main road. In the past, women from Relela, in prolonged labour, have had to be taken in wheelbarrows to wait for emergency transport that may or may not come. Continue reading...
As the number of young gamers has risen sharply, so have addiction narrativesGaming disorder may be a newly recognised condition, but disordered gaming is anything but new. In 2010, a Korean couple was arrested for fatal child neglect spurred by an obsession with Prius Online. Five years earlier, another Korean man collapsed and died after a 50-hour session playing StarCraft in an internet cafe.In the west, World of Warcraft, released in 2004, was one of the first games to trigger addiction narratives in the mainstream press, with the game blamed for causing college students to drop out of university and others losing careers and families. Continue reading...
Huge popularity of online games sparks fears over young people’s mental healthKendal Parmar’s son went from being a sporty and sociable boy who loved school, to a child who would stay in his room and rarely go outside.The change in his personality was down to a gaming disorder that crept up on him at the age of 12, when he started secondary school. Three years later, Joseph is still struggling with the problem. Continue reading...
Young women should be inspired to work on some of the world’s most exciting innovations, says Yasmin AliOn Saturday (International Women in Engineering Day) we celebrate the many achievements of female engineers globally. This is a welcome time to reflect, yet here in the UK, just 11% of engineers are women. Engineering is behind many of the things we take for granted, such as roads, bridges, railways, electricity generation and clean water, but it is also behind AI, robotics, smartphones and wearable technology – some of the most exciting recent technological developments. To get more women into engineering, we must communicate its many applications more clearly to young women. Through doing so we can inspire many more to join a profession that can see them working on some of the world’s most exciting innovations. Once there, we must do all we can to challenge and inspire female engineers.The Create the Future report, a 10,000-person global study by the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, found 92% of respondents felt engineering had an impact on people’s daily lives. Yet only through a better-balanced sector will we be able to build a world fit for the future.
Company to close facilities and end Home Depot partnership after buying company founded by Elon Musk’s cousinsThe electric car maker Tesla is sharply downsizing the residential solar business it bought two years ago in a controversial $2.6bn deal, according to three internal company documents and seven current and former Tesla solar employees.The latest cuts to the division that was once SolarCity – a sales and installation company founded by two cousins of Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk – include closing about a dozen installation facilities, according to internal company documents, and ending a retail partnership with Home Depot that the current and former employees said generated about half of its sales. Continue reading...
by Presented by Jordan Erica Webber and produced by D on (#3SSRS)
Jordan Erica Webber chats to a panel of artificial intelligence experts about what Sundar Pichai’s seven objectives could mean in practiceSubscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, AudioBoom, Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook, Twitter or email us at chipspodcast@theguardian.com.In April 2017, the US Department of Defense launched an Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team, otherwise known as Project Maven. The project uses Google’s artificial intelligence to analyse drone footage. Continue reading...
