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...
Rafaela Vasquez looked up half a second before Arizona crash that killed woman, report saysThe “safety†driver behind the wheel of a self-driving Uber that hit and killed a pedestrian was streaming the television show The Voice on her phone at the time of the crash, police have said.The collision that killed Elaine Herzberg, 49, who was crossing the road at night in Tempe, Arizona, was “entirely avoidableâ€, a police report said, if Rafaela Vasquez had been paying attention. Continue reading...
The electric carmaker is suing a former technician for alleged hacking, but he says he’s being scapegoated for leaking concernsOn Wednesday morning, Martin Tripp was an out-of-work Tesla technician trying to figure out what to do next.By the end of the day, he had been sued by his former employer for alleged hacking and theft, engaged in a hostile email exchange with Elon Musk, come out as a whistleblower, and was being patted down by sheriff’s deputies over allegations that he was threatening to go to his former workplace and “shoot the place upâ€. Continue reading...
Tech firm says relationship was in violation of the company’s non-fraternization policy, which applies to all managersIntel chief executive Brian Krzanich is resigning after the company learned of a consensual relationship that he had with an employee.The company, one of the world’s largest makers of semiconductor chips, said that the relationship was in violation of the company’s non-fraternization policy. Continue reading...
James wants to know whether he should opt for an SSD or HDD to save his files onI am hoping to go to university this year and am looking for a laptop. What’s the difference between an SSD and an HDD, and which would be better for a student? From what I’ve seen, you can get roughly four times as much storage on an HDD as you can on an SSD for the same price, so it seems an HDD would be the better option. JamesThe laptop market is moving from traditional “spinning rust†hard disk drives (HDDs) to chip-based, solid-state drives (SSDs) for several reasons. SSDs are more responsive; they consume less battery power; they are less likely to break when dropped and they take up a lot less space.
Victoria says it will stick with decisions being made by individual schools• Sign up to receive the top stories in Australia every day at noonThe New South Wales government has announced a comprehensive review of smartphone use in schools, but the Victorian government says it is unlikely to follow suit.On Thursday the NSW education minister, Rob Stokes, said the review – to be headed by a child psychologist, Michael Carr-Gregg – would examine the prevalence and effect of technology in classrooms, and would consult parents, teachers and education groups. Continue reading...
Videos of up to an hour are effort to pull young users away from rival, and to allow Facebook to sell more adsInstagram will increase its video time limit from one minute to 10 minutes for most users, in an attempt to lure younger viewers away from YouTube.In the expansion, announced Wednesday, Instagram accounts with large audiences will be able to go as long as an hour. Video will be available through Instagram or a new app called IGTV. The video will eventually give Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, more opportunities to sell advertising. Continue reading...
by Sally Weale Education correspondent on (#3SNBN)
Culture secretary condemns unsupervised access to smartphones and urges more heads to ban them in schoolsThe culture secretary has said it is up to parents to set boundaries around their children’s use of the internet and has condemned unlimited and unsupervised access to smartphones.Matt Hancock, whose brief includes digital issues, agreed parenting in the digital era was difficult but he said it was not impossible and he urged parents to set boundaries around new technology in the same way they have always set boundaries for their children.
by Mark Sweney Media business correspondent on (#3SN2Z)
Platforms could have to seek licences for videos after European parliament actionYouTube stars from Taylor Swift to Ed Sheeran, Beyonce and Jay-Z could be in line for big paydays after the video giant lost a crucial vote in Brussels over new copyright laws that will force it to pay billions of dollars in fees for users watching music videos.For years the music industry has argued that YouTube exploits the lack of legal protection around music videos being viewed on its service to pay minimal amounts to artists and labels when they are viewed. The music industry has lobbied that this “value gap†between the true worth of the music videos and what YouTube decides to pay needs to be addressed with legislation. Continue reading...
MEPs defy warnings from internet pioneers, civil liberties groups and commercial interestsA European parliament committee has voted for legislation that internet pioneers fear will turn the web into “a tool for surveillance and controlâ€.In a key vote on a draft law to overhaul EU copyright rules, the parliament’s legal affairs committee on Wednesday voted for measures that would require the likes of Google and Microsoft to install filters to prevent users from uploading copyrighted materials.
The culture secretary who heads up the digital brief says tech makes parenting harderThe culture secretary has called on more schools to ban mobile phones.Matt Hancock said he admired those headteachers who did not allow their use during the school day and linked social media use with the problem of bullying among young children. Continue reading...
Aleksandr Kogan, who harvested Facebook profiles, dismisses idea as ‘science fiction’ during Senate hearingThe academic researcher who harvested personal data from Facebook for a political consultancy firm said on Tuesday that the idea the data was useful in swaying voters’ decisions was “science fictionâ€.“People may feel angry and violated if they think their data was used in some kind of mind-control project,†Aleksandr Kogan, the now notorious Cambridge University psychologist whose app collected data on up to 87 million Facebook users, said during a US Senate hearing. “This is science fiction. The data is entirely ineffective.†Continue reading...
by Peter Allen Clark, Keza MacDonald and Keith Stuart on (#3SJRX)
From samurai to cyberpunk via ancient Greece, here are the most exciting games from the 100s shown off at this year’s expoAn expansive third-person action game set on foreign planets, Anthem rides the coattails of Destiny, The Division and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands, and promises wide multiplayer support that will continue long after it launches . At first glance it looks a lot like Destiny, with four players in mech exosuits blasting away at space creatures with rifles, pulse cannons, grenades and missiles. There’s a touch of Horizon Zero Dawn in some of the dino-shaped mechs, Monster Hunter in the lush, dramatic environment and wildlife and Halo in the enemies and weapon design. In combat, Anthem recalls Titanfall, as you transition from hovering, to dodging, landing, sprinting and swimming, experimenting with the weighty arsenal of weapons. Developer BioWare is known for great stories: we’ve seen none of that aspect of Anthem yet, but it feels great to play.
As peer-to-peer messaging becomes a popular campaign tool, volunteers face a new danger – unwanted repliesCampaign volunteers have always faced certain hazards when they go out and engage in democracy. For phone bankers, there are hang-ups; for canvassers, a door slammed in the face.But as more campaigns turn to peer-to-peer texting as an efficient and effective form of contacting voters, a new danger has arisen: unsolicited dick pics. Continue reading...
Despite their potential, no one has managed to take them from flight of fancy to everyday realityIn 1940, Henry Ford said: “Mark my words – a combination aeroplane and motor car is coming.†With flying taxis apparently on the way, it looks like he was right, but what a wait. Eight decades years later, “dude, where’s my flying car?†is shorthand for any stuff “they†promised us that we haven’t got.We have always wanted to fly, so, as soon as cars came on to the scene, we wanted those to fly too. Early blueprints for the US interstate highway grid even had adjacent runways ready for flying cars. But those never came. Now that concept of the flying “car†seems quaint or naive, a 20th-century dream fuelled by decades of sci-fi and the Jetsons, as obsolete as the model T. Yet as we’ll see, something just as good may take its place. Continue reading...
IBM shows off Project Debater, artificial intelligence project designed to make coherent arguments as it processes vast data setsIt was man 1, machine 1 in the first live, public debate between an artificial intelligence system developed by IBM and two human debaters.The AI, called Project Debater, appeared on stage in a packed conference room at IBM’s San Francisco office embodied in a 6ft tall black panel with a blue, animated “mouthâ€. It was a looming presence alongside the human debaters Noa Ovadia and Dan Zafrir, who stood behind a podium nearby. Continue reading...
Consumer watchdog took tech giant to court over complaints about repair and replacementApple has been slapped with a $9m fine by the federal court for making false or misleading claims to customers with faulty iPhones and iPads.The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched legal action in April 2017, claiming Apple had misled consumers about their warranty rights by routinely refusing to inspect or fix faulty devices without charge if they had been repaired by a third party. Continue reading...
As the World Health Organization classifies gaming disorder as a mental health condition, one UK treatment centre reveals how it is trying to tackle the problemIan* was in his 20s when he started gaming in the mid-1990s. A long-time interest in building PCs had developed into an initially healthy interest in first-person shooters like Counter Strike and Team Fortress, which he’d play at weekends and when he came home from work.It was the online element of these games, he says, that really changed his relationship to gaming, and what started as a hobby quickly took over his life. Continue reading...
App blamed for circulating false information in India, Brazil, Kenya and now the UKAbijeet Nath and Nilotpal Das were driving back from a visit to a waterfall in the Indian province of Assam earlier this month when they stopped in a village to ask for directions. The two men were pulled out of their car and beaten to death by a mob who accused them of stealing children.“The villagers got suspicious of the strangers as for the last three or four days messages were going around on WhatsApp, as well as through word of mouth, about child lifters roaming the area,†Mukesh Agrawal, a local police officer said. Continue reading...
We need to provide safe spaces where kids can learn positive online behavioursWhen I heard that Eton now requires its year 9s to hand in their mobile phones at bedtime, my immediate thought was I quite like the idea of a check-in, zone-out service that would confiscate my smartphone as the Love Island credits start to roll and return it in time for the 8am news bulletin. But if Eton expects its 13-year-old boarders to hand in their phones overnight, where are they the rest of the time? And why are older boys allowed to keep their phones overnight?On schools and smartphones, I’m an enthusiastic proponent of the nanny state. After Emmanuel Macron made it a key pledge in his presidential campaign, the French government is banning mobile phones in schools altogether after September. In the UK, the decision is left to headteachers: some ban them, others take a more permissive approach. Continue reading...
James Bridle’s essay on disturbing YouTube content aimed at children went viral last year. Has the problem gone away – or is it getting worse?In November of last year, I read an article in the New York Times about disturbing videos targeted at children that were being distributed via YouTube. Parents reported that their children were encountering knock-off editions of their favourite cartoon characters in situations of violence and death: Peppa Pig drinking bleach, or Mickey Mouse being run over by a car. A brief Google of some of the terms mentioned in the article brought up not only many more accounts of inappropriate content, in Facebook posts, newsgroup threads, and other newspapers, but also disturbing accounts of their effects. Previously happy and well-adjusted children became frightened of the dark, prone to fits of crying, or displayed violent behaviour and talked about self-harm – all classic symptoms of abuse. But despite these reports, YouTube and its parent company, Google, had done little to address them. Moreover, there seemed to be little understanding of where these videos were coming from, how they were produced – or even why they existed in the first place.I’m a writer and artist, with a focus on the broad cultural and societal effects of new technologies, and this is how most of my obsessions start: getting increasingly curious about something and digging deeper, with an eye for concealed infrastructures and hidden processes. It’s an approach that has previously led me to investigate Britain’s system of deportation flights or its sophisticated road surveillance network, and this time it took me into the weird, surreal, and often disturbing hinterland of YouTube’s children’s videos. And these videos are worrying on several levels. As I spent more and more time with them, I became perturbed not just by their content, but by the way the system itself seemed to reproduce and exacerbate their most unsavoury excesses, preying on children’s worst fears and bundling them up into nightmare playlists, while blindly rewarding their creators for increasing their view counts even as the videos themselves descended into meaningless parodies and nonsensical stories. Continue reading...
The owner of Amazon and the Washington Post keeps his counsel, spurring the president to ever-greater rageNestled between the embassy of Myanmar and the historic home of Woodrow Wilson, the biggest house in Washington DC is taking shape. A yellow digger is parked outside, construction workers throw sandbags over their backs, and thick black tubes stretch from high windows to the ground like the legs of a giant octopus. Inside, a foreman in a baseball cap sits behind a desk at a laptop. “Going good,†he says.This will be the luxury home of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, owner of the Washington Post and would-be first man on Mars. A sign on the corner of S Street in the swish Kalorama neighbourhood still points to the textile museum that occupied the 27,000 sq ft property before Bezos bought it for $23m. Along the row there are flags and signs supporting immigrants and gay rights; there are diplomatic outposts including the Irish ambassador’s residence. On one doorstep, the inevitable: a package from Amazon. Continue reading...
Foxconn commits to provide workers with basic rights after report by the ObserverAmazon and its Chinese supplier Foxconn have moved swiftly to tackle illegal working conditions exposed in an investigation by the Observer and rights group China Labor Watch.Temporary workers hired without basic rights such as sick pay and holiday pay have been offered staff contracts, and managers have been told to hire more workers to reduce levels of overtime. The company says it is also taking action to tackle “confusing†overtime payments. Continue reading...
Open the crazy ‘scissor doors’, find the right button to spark the engine up and get set for a spooky ride, says Martin LoveLamborghini Aventador S Roadster
Actor says husband was flagged down by passersby who told him to get outActor Mary McCormack has shared video of her husband’s Tesla car catching fire while in traffic in California. Flames can be seen shooting out from underneath the vehicle as it sits on the side of the road.McCormack said in an accompanying tweet it was not the result of an accident and that the incident came “out of the blueâ€. She is married to British director Michael Morris, a former director of the Old Vic theatre who has produced episodes of hit Netflix shows including 13 Reasons Why, Kingdom and Bloodline. Continue reading...
Playstation, Xbox, Ubisoft, Bethesda, EA and more competed for the video game world’s attention this week in LA. Here’s what stood out.E3 is the biggest video games news event of the year, where Playstation, EA, Xbox, Ubisoft and more compete to show off their latest games (and announce new ones) at flashy press conferences and ostentatious booths in the Los Angeles Convention Centre. Now that the onslaught of announcements, trailers and general showing-off from the week-long show is over, here are ten big stories that emerged from the chaos.
Couple say holiday was ruined after site cancelled booking at the last minuteYou have bought your plane tickets and sorted out your accommodation but then, just days before you are about to set off on holiday, Airbnb suddenly cancels your booking with no explanation, wrecking your plans.This is what happened to Surrey couple Roger Ridey and Alice Woolley, who had to scrabble around to rearrange their holiday after Airbnb – the company, not the hosts of the property – pulled the plug on their week’s stay in San Francisco, 10 days before they were due to arrive. Continue reading...
Easing of immigration rules may not be enough to keep UK ahead of rivals, say expertsLeaders in the UK tech industry have warned that the government’s removal of a visa cap for skilled migrants may not go far enough to ensure Britain continues to attract the best people from across the sector.Related: How will the UK's tech sector fare outside the EU? Brexit Means … Podcast Continue reading...
Technology is starting to behave in intelligent and unpredictable ways that even its creators don’t understand. As machines increasingly shape global events, how can we regain control?The voice-activated gadget in the corner of your bedroom suddenly laughs maniacally, and sends a recording of your pillow talk to a colleague. The clip of Peppa Pig your toddler is watching on YouTube unexpectedly descends into bloodletting and death. The social network you use to keep in touch with old school friends turns out to be influencing elections and fomenting coups.Related: YouTube to clamp down on disturbing kids' videos such as dark Peppa Pig Continue reading...
by Owen Bowcott Legal affairs correspondent on (#3S9S6)
Campaigners say technology risks turning UK citizens into ‘walking ID cards’Two legal challenges have been launched against police forces in south Wales and London over their use of automated facial recognition (AFR) technology on the grounds the surveillance is unregulated and violates privacy.The claims are backed by the human rights organisations Liberty and Big Brother Watch following complaints about biometric checks at the Notting Hill carnival, on Remembrance Sunday, at demonstrations and in high streets. Continue reading...
Features for synching with other apps is most aggressive move yet to capitalise on Facebook’s problemsSnapchat users will be able to use their account on the messaging service to log in to other apps, export their bitmoji and post information from elsewhere direct in the Snapchat app, as the company makes its most aggressive attempt yet to capitalise on Facebook’s woes.The new features, collectively called “Snap Kitâ€, offer a set of tools that developers can incorporate into their own apps. The Creative Kit feature is about getting content into Snapchat: similar to an earlier integration with Uber, it lets apps create personalised filters, stickers and lenses that users can share on Snapchat. Food delivery service Postmates, for instance, will let users throw an ETA for their food onto a picture – to let their friends know to hurry up. Continue reading...
Julia would buy a MacBook Pro Retina but she doesn’t like the latest version’s keyboard. What are the alternatives?I recently upgraded to a used early-2015 MacBook Pro Retina because of Apple’s recent redesign of the MacBook Pro, which sliced off a little bit of thickness at the cost of various ports and the very reliable keyboard with scissor mechanism. Apple is facing class-action lawsuits over the new butterfly keyboards’ untimely breakage, and as my computer’s main job is to be a writing tool, I didn’t want to risk ending up with non-functional keys. Also, I have tried the new keyboard and I did not like the feel of it: travel seems too short and rather “flat†for my taste.
World’s favourite video game holds first major competition, watched live in LA by 15,000 fans and millions more onlineUnder the unforgiving LA sun, in front of a crowd of thousands, the first ever pro/celebrity Fortnite tournament took place on Tuesday afternoon, and anyone still mystified by the success of this brashly colourful multiplayer shooter would perhaps have been a lot wiser by the end. It was a fun spectacle, put on by the developer, Epic Games, for fans who screamed their support throughout the hour-long contest.The set-up was simple. Fifty well-known Fortnite players – young adults who play every night for countless fans on YouTube and Twitch – were teamed up with 50 celebrities from the worlds of wrestling, television and music, with each pair taking part in an all-or-nothing match of the world’s most popular video game. In Fortnite’s famed Battle Royale mode, 100 players land on a giant island and must fight until only one player – or team – is left standing. Usually the prize is simply kudos, but here there was a $3m (£2.2m) pot to aim for, the money to go to charities chosen by the top-finishing duos. Continue reading...
Move will prevent hackers and others accessing devices without proper authorisationApple is closing a security gap that allowed outsiders to obtain personal information from locked iPhones without a password, a change that will thwart law enforcement agencies that have been exploiting the vulnerability to collect evidence in criminal investigations.
The CEO is known for outsized claims and ambitious goals. But numerous factory workers say he doesn’t follow through – and that his leadership sets a troubling toneIt was “a master class in emotional intelligenceâ€, raved the business magazine Inc, and “a powerful lesson in authentic, heartfelt leadershipâ€.Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, had emailed his entire staff following the May 2017 publications of separate investigations by the Guardian and a workplace safety organization showing high injury rates at the company’s northern California electric car factory. Continue reading...
Rules appear to target services like Onavo Protect, which claims to protect user data even as it feeds information to FacebookApple has updated its rules to restrict app developers’ ability to harvest data from mobile phones, which could be bad news for a Facebook-owned data security app called Onavo Protect.Onavo ostensibly provides users with a free virtual private network (VPN) which, it claims, helps “keep you and your data safe when you browse and share information on the webâ€. What is not immediately obvious is that it feeds information to Facebook about what other apps you are using and how much you are using them back to the social networking giant. Continue reading...
Chinese company hits back at report it will be snubbed on security grounds and also says it hopes to avoid foreign influence registerThe Chinese telecommunications company Huawei has said it is still talking to the Turnbull government about participating in the 5G wireless network and might not have to register on the proposed foreign influence transparency register.
Reuters Institute report found that use of WhatsApp for news has almost tripled since 2014The public is increasingly forgoing Facebook as a news source and using WhatsApp to share and discuss stories with friends and family, according to a new report on the state of the media.“Consumers are being put off by ‘toxic’ debates and unreliable news. They are also finding that alternative networks offer more convenience, greater privacy and less opportunity to be misunderstood. As a result they are moving discussion to messaging apps where they can be sure they are talking to ‘real friends’,†says the report from the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Continue reading...
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