Technology | The Guardian

Decades after women were pushed out of programming, Amazon’s AI recruiting technology carried on the industry’s legacy of biasA recent report revealed Amazon’s AI recruiting technology developed a bias against women because it was trained predominantly on men’s résumés. Although Amazon shut the project down, this kind of mechanized sexism is common and growing – and the problem isn’t limited to AI mishaps.Facebook allows the targeting of job ads by gender, resulting in discrimination in online job advertisements for traditionally male-dominated jobs from construction to policing. The practice has long been illegal in traditional print media – but Facebook’s targeting tools encourage it. Not only can this affect whether women and non-binary people can see ads; it also affects male job-seekers who are older and therefore viewed as less desirable by many employers. Facebook has come under fire for illegal advertising practices in the past: notably, it scrapped thousands of microtargeting categories after a 2016 ProPublica report showed how it allowed racial discrimination in housing ads. Continue reading...

Billionaire tweets ‘visual approximation’ of bottle as company applies to use the name for tequila branded after the electric carsElon Musk is hitting the bottle – well, probably. Tesla has trademarked “Teslaquila”, a tequila branded after his electric car company.The product started as an April Fool’s joke when Musk claimed Tesla was going bankrupt and that he had been found “passed out against a Tesla Model 3, surrounded by ‘Teslaquilla’ bottles, the tracks of dried tears still visible on his cheeks”. Continue reading...

We saw the UK and France face off to defend their undefeated records in the Overwatch World Cup, competitive gaming’s answer to the global football tournamentIt’s a Friday morning in late September and 2,000 fans are packed into the underground arena of La Grande Arche de la Défense, ready for the Paris stage of the Overwatch World Cup. It’s a fairly mixed-gender crowd, predominantly young adults, mostly French, many wearing game-themed clothing. Overwatch is one of the world’s most popular competitive video games: matches are fast-paced, chaotic battles between two teams of six players. Using colourful characters with outlandish powers, they take turns to attack and defend objectives. Fights can be over in seconds or turn into minutes-long scraps. The sense of unpredictability makes for very exciting viewing.The Overwatch league works like football’s Premier League, with teams signing players across nationalities, but the Overwatch World Cup evokes a sense of home pride among viewers. Each of the Paris leg’s 15 matches had their share of intense moments as national teams fought for the two remaining places at the finals, which will take place later this month in Anaheim, California. The previous group stages in Incheon, South Korea; Burbank, USA; and Bangkok, Thailand. Continue reading...

Is the brave new digital world affecting our politics? Could it render democracy obsolete? Jamie Bartlett joins Jordan Erica Webber to discussThere are plenty of ways to consider the power the Silicon Valley giants have: their financial power, the compulsive hold they have on consumers, the sheer volume of users and the data that comes along with them. One area in which this power has come under particular scrutiny recently is in the influence big tech has on elections worldwide.To discuss the growth in tribalism and explain the age of “Tinder politics”, Jordan Erica Webber speaks to author and tech blogger Jamie Bartlett, whose book The People Vs Tech explores the “bitter conflict” between technology and democracy. They address how the internet has turbo-charged human behaviour to expect instant gratification in areas where it does not belong and how, as a result, citizens, as much as governments, need to change the way they interact with data. Continue reading...

Reddit’s r/WatchPeopleDie sees 425,000 subscribers share clips of horrific and tragic deaths. Since when did so many of us like watching death?Warning: sensitive contentIs it disingenuous that the name of the Reddit community r/WatchPeopleDie uses the word die?Put it this way: the people in the videos and GIFs shared on Watch People Die do not merely die. Neither do they pass away (too polite), nor go to a better place (too peaceful). They are beheaded, incinerated, exploded, crushed, electrocuted, drowned, mangled, stoned and disemboweled. And their deaths, horrific and tragic as they are, can be watched by anyone with internet access, over and over again. Continue reading...

Martin is interested in using a DWeb alternative to Google Docs, but worries about the energy use associated with blockchainI recently read a piece about decentralisation. As I am looking for an alternative to Google, Microsoft and the other big names, Graphite stood out. However, it uses blockchain, and one thing that I do not find encouraging is the amount of energy it consumes.So my question is: from an energy point of view, is there much difference between cloud and blockchain?The main aim of the decentralised web (DWeb) is to remove the power of centralised “gatekeepers” such as Facebook and Google, who hoover up the world’s data and monetise it by selling advertising. It reminds me of the original concept of the web, where every computer would be both a client and a server, sharing information on a more or less equal basis. Continue reading...

The US military is creating a more automated form of warfare – one that will greatly increase its capacity to wage war everywhere forever.Last month marked the 17th anniversary of 9/11. With it came a new milestone: we’ve been in Afghanistan for so long that someone born after the attacks is now old enough to go fight there. They can also serve in the six other places where we’re officially at war, not to mention the 133 countries where special operations forces have conducted missions in just the first half of 2018.The wars of 9/11 continue, with no end in sight. Now, the Pentagon is investing heavily in technologies that will intensify them. By embracing the latest tools that the tech industry has to offer, the US military is creating a more automated form of warfare – one that will greatly increase its capacity to wage war everywhere forever. Continue reading...

There are plenty of theories to explain falling alcohol use among millennials. But maybe we’re missing the pointYou don’t need to spend much time adrift in the 21st-century mediascape to conclude that there is something seriously wrong with young people today. Millennials are more narcissistic, anxious, annoying, entitled, communist and fond of avocados than any generation ever; millennials are killing everything from mayonnaise to diamonds to the car industry; millennials are making everyone else feel bad; millennials – get this! – don’t even drink any more.The figures just released by the Health Survey for England lend weight to what is becoming a familiar trope. In 2015, one in three 16- to 24-year-olds were completely teetotal, compared with one in five in 2005. Lifetime abstainers rose from 9% to 17%; meanwhile rates of harmful drinking have declined. In 2015, 28% admitted to drinking above the recommended limits; 10 years previously, it was 43%. The 10,000 participants reported that complete abstention was becoming “mainstream”. Continue reading...

Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC; Ubisoft

Great screen, robust design, brilliant keyboard and Thunderbolt 3 make the third-generation ThinkPad X1 Tablet a potent combinationLenovo’s third-generation ThinkPad X1 Tablet aims to be a no-compromise Windows 10 detachable that gives users what Microsoft’s Surface won’t: USB-C and Thunderbolt 3.The form factor is familiar. The actual computer is squeezed into an 8.9mm thick tablet with a kickstand out the back and a magnetically attached keyboard that sits up on an angle for better typing. Continue reading...

Specialists had been building computer programs since 2014 to review résumés in an effort to automate the search processAmazon’s machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women.The team had been building computer programs since 2014 to review job applicants’ résumés, with the aim of mechanizing the search for top talent, five people familiar with the effort told Reuters. Continue reading...

Son of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch is the lead candidate to replace the embattled Tesla founderJames Murdoch is the favourite to take over the chairmanship of volatile electric-carmaker Tesla from its embattled founder, Elon Musk, according to reports.The son of newspaper, satellite TV and movie studio tycoon Rupert Murdoch is now the lead candidate for the Tesla chair, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing two people briefed on the discussions. Continue reading...

Rockstar Games’ upcoming wild west adventure is a step forward for virtual world realism – and a reminder that cowboys, too, had to face up to modernityLeft to my own devices with Red Dead Redemption 2 for a few hours, I was expecting to see sweeping open plains interrupted by mesas, dusty frontier towns with swing-door saloons and wary inhabitants, and a gang of crusty outlaws sharing stories around a campfire then riding through the woods on their way to a shootout. This astounding virtual wild west models itself on the classic Hollywood image of that time, the same fantasy as depicted in Westworld. What I wasn’t expecting in my brief preview was a city, Saint Denis, modelled on turn-of-the-century New Orleans.Riding into town as an outlaw frontiersman, I suddenly felt like a tragic anachronism. A tram rolled past, and I tied up my horse to board the next one Continue reading...

Most of us have an unmanageable amount of data on our devices. But a few easy tweaks could bring it all back under controlYou have Marie Kondoed your wardrobe, recycled your old newspapers and taken unwanted books to the charity shop. It may feel as if you have succeeded in decluttering your life, but then you turn on your phone or open up your laptop and find a whole load more to tidy up.Sometimes, it gets out of control. Just this week, the snappily named European Problematic Use of the Internet Research Network warned of the dangers of “cyberhoarding”, an inability to delete information gathered online. Researchers weren’t sure whether this was a new condition or an extension of a more common offline affliction. Continue reading...

Peter Dutton says the tech giants have a responsibility to help combat organised crimeThe Morrison government has criticised Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies for opposing its planned encryption laws, saying the internet giants have a responsibility to help combat organised crime.Peter Dutton, the home affairs minister, says Australia’s law enforcement agencies have been prevented from infiltrating paedophile networks and other organised crime groups because the messages they send over encrypted electronic messaging services, such as Wickr and Whatsapp, cannot be intercepted by authorities. Continue reading...

A host of online accounts are dedicated to posting an identical image every day – from pictures of Bake Off stars to Steve Buscemi. But why?If scrolling through your Instagram feed first thing has become an unavoidable morning ritual, then a posting trend that has recently garnered attention might just make sense to you. Teenagers – and they are by all accounts predominantly teenagers – have for the past couple of years taken to running daily “same picture” accounts, which do exactly as the title suggests. They post one pic and one pic only, the same one, every single day. That picture can be anything from a stock photo of a gherkin to a cut-out of Danny DeVito’s face. There are same accounts featuring Steve Harvey, a shirtless Gibby (from the sitcom iCarly), a Supreme brick, a person falling, a red Croc, a pink Croc, Pink Guy, the Fortnite pump, a dog called Kevinand a lone chicken nugget. And while certain left-field takes on the format see that one pic slightly altered with each new post – see @samepicofgodfieri’s daily Warholesque reworking of a smiling Guy Fieri shot – most are straight up repeats: visual mantras for the oversaturated.Elena, who declines to give her last name but is based in Germany, started @samepictureofstevebuscemi in March 2016 for no reason other than, as she puts it, to “promote the man’s beauty”. Why does this mode of tribute appeal more than any other? “I’m a pretty lazy person,” she says. “It would be more interesting to look at different pictures of him every day, but looking at the same pic every day is quite funny.” And that equivocation between mesmeric boredom and elusive amusement seems key to the whole phenomenon. Continue reading...

Public asked not to use app during drivers’ strike, which follows last week’s McStrike in push to unionise gig economyUber customers have been urged not to cross a “digital picket line” as British drivers with the app-based service staged their first coordinated national strike.Organisers of the 24-hour strike, which started at lunchtime on Tuesday – the latest part of a push to unionise the so-called gig economy – said many drivers logged off the app and stayed at home, while hundreds staged rallies outside the Uber offices in London, Birmingham and Nottingham. Continue reading...

Android-maker bets on dual-camera selfies and AI features such as Super Res Zoom and Top Shot to battle Samsung and AppleGoogle’s new Pixel 3 smartphones attempt to push the computational photography envelope, challenging Apple’s new iPhone XS and Samsung’s Galaxy S9.As with last year’s Pixel 2, Google is further flexing its artificial-intelligence muscle, with more and more local AI-driven features across every facet of the device, from the camera and smart Gmail replies to battery life and device control. Continue reading...

After a Florida woman attempted to offer up a photo of her son as an emblem of the #HimToo movement, something unusual happened: the meme had a happy endingWhen you are the subject of a typical Twitter meme, the best policy is to just ignore it and wait for it to end. That seemed to be the case on Monday night, as thousands of Twitter users piled joke after joke on top of a post by a Florida woman who had attempted to offer up a photo of her unwitting son as an emblem of the burgeoning #HimToo movement. These things usually end in bitter fighting and brutal name-calling.But then something weird happened: the meme had a delightful ending. Continue reading...

In Schodack, a local group filed a lawsuit to stop a proposed fulfillment center, even as town officials support the projectCities across the US are currently fighting tooth and claw to be the home of Amazon’s second headquarters. But not everywhere is so happy when Amazon comes to town.Schodack, New York, a town of about 13,000 people just south of the state capital of Albany, is currently facing the possible construction of a 1m-sq-ft Amazon fulfillment center. Continue reading...

Company reveals details about voice-controlled device, which was delayed after data breachFacebook wants to be invited into your living room. The company has revealed details about its Amazon Echo competitor, a voice-controlled, webcam-equipped smart screen named Portal.Arriving in the US in November, Facebook Portal is a $199 (£152) 10-inch screen, with two speakers and a high-quality webcam attached, which the company hopes users will put in their living rooms and kitchens and use to launch video chats with friends and loved ones. Continue reading...

Margaret Hodge MP says it is ‘outrageous’ how little tax the company pays in BritainFacebook paid £15.8m in tax in the UK last year despite collecting a record £1.3bn in British sales.The social media giant’s accounts show that while Facebook increased its UK income by more than 50% in 2017, its pre-tax profits increased by only 6% to £62.7m. The Silicon Valley-based company’s UK taxable profits were reduced by a £444m charge for unexplained “administrative expenses”. Continue reading...

Tech company faced claims it gathered personal data from more than 4m iPhone usersThe high court has blocked a mass lawsuit against Google that aimed to collect as much as £3bn in compensation for the company’s historical practice of collecting data on iPhone users whose privacy settings should have prevented surveillance.Mr Justice Warby, sitting in London, announced his decision on Monday. Continue reading...

Whether it’s fighting terrifying beasts, wreaking anarchy in a parallel universe or singing karaoke, these titles challenge both your intellect and reflexesA majestic adventure across Norse mythology in the company of buttoned-up old god Kratos and his young son Atreus. Alongside jaw-dropping encounters and fights with the creatures, places and gods of the Norse canon, it unexpectedly has a lot to say about family dynamics and grief. The current high bar for action games.

Rise of populism | Identity politics | Clapping | Dating | Paying the ferrymanJohn Green (Letters, 4 October) asks us to imagine if Hitler and Goebbels had had television and social media at their disposal. Someone already has. Timur Vermes’s brilliant satirical novel Look Who’s Back is predicated on the idea that Hitler wakes up in 2011 and is taken in hand by PR and marketing people to become a huge success. The message doesn’t matter as long as they can ride the wave of the success. For many Hungarians, and others, it must be eerily prescient.

Civilisation, a new photography exhibition and accompanying book, is an ambitious attempt to document the human experience of the modern worldWhat does the 21st century look like? What are the resonant images of a civilisation that aspires to be global? These kinds of questions were the starting point for a project that formed in the mind of William A Ewing, who had been a museum director, curator of international exhibitions and writer about photography for nearly 40 years.Every epoch and generation had sought to define itself, Ewing believed, but how would you go about defining our own dizzying times? The exhibition that represents his tentative conclusions will open at the National Museum in Seoul, South Korea, later this year. It will then tour the globe – Beijing, Melbourne and Montreal are its first stops – for what Ewing hopes will be a decade-long journey. The exhibition consists of the work of 140 of the world’s most celebrated photographers – from Edward Burtynsky to Cindy Sherman – each of whom is represented by the images that best seemed to answer the questions above. Continue reading...

The digital debate is now about trade and security – and every major nation is insisting on its technological sovereigntyAmid the hand-wringing about the rise of nationalism and populism, it’s easy to miss that the past two years have also produced surprising and useful shifts in global opinion. Even Donald Trump can be good news for the world.Nowhere is this gestalt shift more evident than in how we approach policy dilemmas related to technology. The idea of “digital” as a magic, untouchable realm that was to bring prosperity to all, one disruption at a time, is now dead. The thorny questions are no longer the prerogative of affluent hippies at Wired magazine or TED talks; instead, they are returning to their original realms of international trade, national economic development and security. Continue reading...

The new GLS from Mercedes-Benz may be the ‘S-Class of SUVs’ but it also asks some big questions about what we want from cars like theseMercedes-Benz GLS 350d

Expulsion of agents from the Netherlands will not deter Vladimir Putin, experts sayMoscow is unlikely to be deterred from carrying out aggressive foreign spying operations by the embarrassing unmasking of several of its agents in the Netherlands, analysts who study the Kremlin and Russian intelligence services have said.The sloppy tradecraft of the GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency, should be cause for concern in the Kremlin, they said, but Vladimir Putin is still likely to take Thursday’s public revelations as just the “collateral damage” of his political war with the west. Continue reading...

Players have had a week to discover new changes such as the floating island. Which will have the biggest impact?Fortnite developer Epic Games certainly lived up to its name with the launch of season six. Arriving last Thursday, the latest instalment of the Battle Royale juggernaut saw a great chunk of land being ripped from Loot Lake and re-forming as a floating sky island supported by the purple interdimensional cube that’s been hovering over the map for weeks.But that wasn’t the only major change to either the map or the weird mythology that seems to underpin everything that happens in the game. These are the key new places to explore and features to play with. Continue reading...

Can the messy and complex world we live in be reduced to algorithms? And should we even try? Mathematician and lecturer Hannah Fry attempts to answer all this and more“Algorithm”, once an academic term used by mathematicians and scientists, has entered the general lexicon thanks to today’s quickly evolving technology-driven society. Algorithms are an integral and increasingly pervasive part of our existence in the modern world. But are they becoming too pervasive? And could they ever truly capture what it means to be human?To try to answer all this and more, Jordan Erica Webber hears from mathematician and author Hannah Fry, whose latest book, Hello World, asks what it means to be human in the age of the algorithm. Joining producer Max in the studio, they discuss the role big data plays, what algorithms might teach us about humanity, and the role these systems might play in health – both good and bad. Continue reading...

Both firms deny report they found chips giving backdoor access to computers and dataA Chinese military unit has been inserting tiny microchips into computer servers used by companies including Apple and Amazon that give China unprecedented backdoor access to computers and data, according to a new Bloomberg report.The tiny chips, as small as the tip of a sharpened pencil and designed to be undetectable without specialist equipment, were implanted on to the motherboards of servers on the production line in China, the report in Bloomberg Businessweek said. Continue reading...

Shares drop as Tesla boss attacks regulator just hours after judge’s order scrutinizing dealTesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, mocked the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, hours after a federal judge ordered him and the regulator to justify their settlement of securities fraud charges.“Just want to [sic] that the Shortseller Enrichment Commission is doing incredible work,” Musk, a frequent critic of investors betting against the electric car company, wrote on Twitter. “And the name change is so on point!“ Continue reading...

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The GRU intelligence agency is undoubtedly ambitious but this operation is hardly a triumph

Netherlands expelled four GRU officers after alleged attacks on OPCW and UK Foreign Office

Iain has an unusably slow desktop. Will a £300 upgrade revive it, or should he put the money towards a new machine?I have a Dell an all-in-one desktop PC from 2012. It has become painfully slow. It takes so long to boot up and run Google Chrome, Microsoft Office and Apple iTunes that it’s almost useless. (It also does photo and video storage, accounts and school work.)A local computer business will upgrade the hard drive to an SSD, and clone it so I don’t have to reinstall everything, for about £300. According to them, this should give it an extra year or two of life. I like the style of this machine, and discarding it would be a waste if it still worked fine. However, the poor performance is critical and I am worried the hard drive will die and I’ll lose everything.Your worry filled me with dread. Hard drives are increasingly likely to fail after five years of use. Every PC should be backed up, and you should have multiple copies of irreplaceable data. If you don’t, please buy a USB external hard drive as soon as possible and back up both your PC and your data – photos, music, documents, accounts etc. Continue reading...

The iPhone XS hasn’t broken mould like the iPhone X, and it has weaker battery life, but its camera, design and performance are class-leadingThe iPhone XS isn’t the only all-screen iPhone on the block this year, but with its balance of large screen and small body, is it still the iPhone to buy?To say that the iPhone XS looks exactly the same as the iPhone X is somewhat of an understatement. Apart from a pair of new antenna lines and asymmetric holes in the bottom, the phone is an identical metal and glass sandwich. Unless you buy the new gold colour. Continue reading...

Scott Morrison claims Russian intelligence agency GRU behind cyber-attack during 2016 presidential campaignAustralia’s government believes Russian military officials hacked and leaked the emails of senior US Democrats during the 2016 presidential election campaign, before the documents were published online.It claims the Russian operatives were members of the GRU, a Russian military intelligence agency, and the hack was not their only attack. Continue reading...

Foreign Office increases pressure on Russia after Skripal poisoningThe British government has directly accused Russian military intelligence of being behind a spate of “reckless and indiscriminate cyber-attacks” carried out on the orders of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, including the hacking in 2016 of the US Democratic National Committee headquarters.The claim is a precursor to the announcement of further UK intelligence revelations of Russian state involvement in the poisoning in Salisbury of Sergei Skripal, the Russian double agent. Continue reading...

Facebook slips in top 10 but US tech firms dominate Interbrand’s ranking againApple, Google and Amazon are the top three most valuable brands in the world, according to an annual report that underlines the dominance of the US tech companies.Interbrand, which assigns a dollar value to each brand based on factors such as financial performance and brand strength, ranked Apple first in 2018 with a brand value of $214bn. In August, Apple became the first public company with a trillion dollar valuation. Continue reading...

Online retailer hit headlines for pay award but GMB accuses it of ‘stealth tax’ on workersAmazon has been criticised for slashing benefits for UK warehouse workers, offsetting at least half of a big pay rise announced this week.The removal of employee share and incentive schemes could cost thousands of workers £1,500 in a single year, according to the GMB union, which accused the online retailer of imposing “a stealth tax on its own wage increase”. Continue reading...

Xbox One, PC; Playground Games/Microsoft

Latest Microsoft update comes with new emoji, smart keyboards, cloud-powered clipboards and faster, more considerate updatesThe next version of Windows 10 has arrived and is ready to download as a free update complete with a load of new emoji, better links to your phone and a smarter SwiftKey-powered keyboard. Continue reading...

Company also launches Surface Studio 2 PC, with all machines coming with improved processors and new colour optionsMicrosoft has launched new, faster versions of its popular Surface Pro, Surface Laptop and large Surface Studio PCs.The new models, announced in New York on Tuesday, continue Microsoft’s premium PC line, introducing Intel’s latest 8th-generation Core i5 and i7 processors to match competitors such as Apple’s MacBook Pros, Huawei’s MateBook X Pro and Dell’s XPS 13. Continue reading...

Giant’s minimum wage rise is down to a looming labour shortage and more stick from politicians, from Trump and Sanders to CorbynAmazon is a trillion-dollar company run by the world’s richest man. It has come from nowhere to be an online behemoth in less than one-quarter of a century. Yet even the biggest company, this behemoth of behemoths, is vulnerable to concerted political pressure and has to live with the basic laws of demand and supply.That, put simply, is the explanation for Amazon’s announcement of seriously big increases in minimum wages for its workers in the US and Britain. On the other side of the Atlantic, no worker will be earning less than $15 (£11.50) an hour – double the federal minimum. Here, the minimum has been raised by 28% for workers in London and 18% for those in the rest of the UK. Continue reading...

Unusual alliance calls on government to ‘slow down’ and listen to ‘legitimate concerns’Tech heavyweights Google and Facebook have joined civil and digital rights groups in an unusual alliance aimed at defeating Australia’s planned encryption laws.The Alliance for a Safe and Secure Internet brings together the disparate groups in a plea for the government to “slow down” and listen to “legitimate concerns” about its encryption bill. Continue reading...

The breach affecting 50m accounts took advantage of ‘tokens’, a system used by third-party platforms such as SpotifyRemember the Facebook hack last week that compromised at least 50m accounts? It’s worse than you think.Last Friday, the social media company revealed a vulnerability that allowed attackers to steal automated log-in credentials (or “tokens”). Continue reading...

Company says it has ‘listened to its critics’ as it increases US rate to $15 and UK to £9.50Amazon has raised its minimum wage for British and American workers, in a major milestone for campaigners pushing for pay increases to tackle rising levels of poverty and inequality.The company, which has become almost a byword for low-paid and low-quality work in recent years, said it would increase its US minimum wage to $15 (£11.57) an hour for more than 350,000 workers. In the UK 40,000 permanent and temporary staff will get an increase to £10.50 an hour in London and £9.50 across the rest of the country. Continue reading...

Site brought down for second time in 24 hours, with first attack traced to DoncasterThe UK Black History Month website has been brought down by hackers for a second time in 24 hours in what its editors believe to be a case of “cyber-racism”.The website, which includes resources for schools and details of forthcoming events, first fell prey to a cyber-attack at 8.45am on Monday. Its IT team worked through the night and the site came back online on Tuesday morning, but was attacked again. It was again restored on Tuesday afternoon, but the website’s editors warned that further attacks were possible. Continue reading...