Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, a longtime backer of the new vice-president pick, are among those pledging supportLess than a month after Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016, he invited the cream of Silicon Valley's tech elite to a meeting at his transition team's headquarters at Trump Tower.It was an awkward affair. Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, Google's Larry Page and Amazon's Jeff Bezos had facial expressions that ranged from a semi-rictus grin to full tech-mogul-in-a-hostage-situation. But then, in a sense they were. There was a new sheriff in town - and none of them had seen him coming. Continue reading...
The billionaire's companies enjoyed major tax breaks in the state. Now, he's declared it intolerable and ordered his firms to TexasElon Musk announced this week he would move the headquarters of his companies X and SpaceX from California to Texas, the culmination of a longstanding face-off between the volatile executive and the state where his companies began.Just one year ago, Musk declared he would not move X headquarters out of San Francisco - despite his assertions the city was in a doom spiral". At the time, he wrote: You only know who your real friends are when the chips are down. San Francisco, beautiful San Francisco, though others forsake you, we will always be your friend." Continue reading...
Internet betting tycoon Teddy Sagi's multimillion-pound acquisition of a gaming firm now allegedly worth nothing is the subject of a court case involving heavily contested claims of fraud and physical threatEnsconced within the luxury of his 30m Knightsbridge pad overlooking Hyde Park, the billionaire Teddy Sagi laid his cards on the table. I have a big pair of balls," he proclaimed, according to documents filed at the high court. I lost 300,000 in the casino last night. I will buy your business for 53m."For the man on the other side of the negotiating table, the online gambling entrepreneur Simon Wilson, the stakes had never beenhigher. Continue reading...
It's not that the outfits are necessarily bad, although many of them are. Have we lost something in the transition away from the coat-and-tie?The business casual revolution of the 1990s and rise of tech billionaires in the early aughts supposedly ushered in a new era that freed employees from the shackles of dress codes. Mark Zuckerberg turned hoodies and jeans into a symbol of New Economy meritocracy, the uniform of whiz kid hackers shaking up the coat-and-tie aesthetic of traditional industries back east. In the digital economy, many imagined, the most successful companies would allow talented employees to wear whatever they wanted as they jumped around in colorful ball pits.But as Facebook engineer Carlos Bueno wrote in his 2014 blogpost Inside the Mirrortocracy, we simply traded our hard-written dress codes for softly coded dress norms. The new world is actually not so free. The cognitive dissonance is plain to see on the faces of recruiters who pretend clothing is no big deal, but are clearly disappointed if you show up to a job interview in a dark worsted business suit. You are expected to conform to the rules of The Culture before you are allowed to demonstrate your actual worth," wrote Bueno. What wearing a suit really indicates is - I am not making this up - non-conformity, one of the gravest of sins." Continue reading...
For decades now, anyone who's wanted to know everything about anything has asked Google. But is the platform losing its edge - and can we still trust it to tell us the truth?I didn't know I was dead until I saw it on Google. When I searched my name, there it was: a picture of my smiling face next to the text Tom Faber was a physicist and publisher, and he was a university lecturer at Cambridge for 35 years". Apparently I died on 27 July 2004, aged 77. This was news to me.The problem was the picture. When you search the name of a notable person, Google may create what it calls a knowledge panel", a little box with basic information taken from Wikipedia. Somewhere along the way, the algorithm had confused pictures of my face with the biography of another man who shared my name. According to his obituary, he was a distinguished physicist with a literary hinterland". Google provides a feedback form to resolve this type of bug. I filled it in several times, but it made no difference. Continue reading...
The Shanghai native and street photographer intentionally included his own shadow in this colourful imageShanghai native Chang Nianzu and his wife were visiting their local children's playground with their four-year-old daughter, Chang Yuning, when he took this photograph. The park is in Xuhui district, near the main football stadium. Shanghai is very colourful and clean, but for a hobbyist street photographer like me, it's difficult to capture that. Sometimes there are other elements that interfere, like trees and parked bikes."As Nianzu watched his daughter explore, he realised the light and colours would lend themselves to a good photograph. His composition was inspired by American photographer Lee Friedlander: In some of his work he intentionally includes his shadow, so I imitated this with my own shadow in the yellow triangle." Nianzu then waited patiently with his Xiaomi 13 Pro for someone to walk up the stairs and complete his shot. Suddenly, another little girl, about six or seven, dressed all in purple, appeared. It suited the scene perfectly," Nianzu says. Continue reading...
Using the reissued 3210 model left our reporter very frustrated - but less mobile-obsessed and in awe of its battery lifeAfter about 10 minutes of furious tapping on the tiny buttons to write a still unfinished text the anger I'm feeling towards the retro" Nokia 3210 I'm toiling over is mounting.It is one of a new wave of detox" or dumb" phones aimed at techno-stressed individuals who want to escape the thrall of apps and notifications but, in this moment, I really want to smash it. Continue reading...
Microsoft's IT outage reveals the fragility of our software systems and the risks of a more serious technology collapse Global Microsoft IT outage: latest updatesPlanes grounded, trains delayed, television stations off air, hospital appointments cancelled, electronic payments halted. No, it wasn't the start of a massive cyber-attack from Russia, or the backdrop to a Hollywood blockbuster, but an IT upgrade that unexpectedly went disastrously wrong.That it had such widespread effects is to some extent testament to the ubiquity of Microsoft's Windows' operating system, a well-known global dependency, and more particularly to a faulty software update pushed out by the security and anti-virus company CrowdStrike to its widely used Falcon software system. Continue reading...
Yale Law School graduate found allies in tech billionaires including Peter Thiel who rallied privately for himWhen JD Vance was a student at Yale Law School in 2011, he attended a talk featuring Peter Thiel, the conservative tech billionaire. Although Vance didn't know Thiel at the time, over the next decade he would become Thiel's employee, friend and the recipient of his largesse. Thiel's millions paved the way for Vance to become a senator.Thiel's talk was the most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School", Vance would write in a 2020 essay for The Lamp, a Catholic magazine. In Vance's telling, Thiel's talk of the failures of elite institutions and belief in Christianity made him reconsider his own faith and immediately make plans for a career outside of law - one that wound through the worlds of tech and venture capital before politics. Continue reading...
by Helen Davidson and Chi-hui Lin in Taipei on (#6PAYD)
Trump has accused Taiwan of taking' the US chip sector, but Taipei has been at the forefront of the industry for decades, and its future could depend on itThe Hsinchu Science Park, on Taiwan's west coast, is lush and green, with streets neatly planned and clearly signposted. The buildings are modern and well maintained - from the outside most visitors wouldn't even know that they are among the world's most important factories.Hsinchu used to be famous for its fishball street snacks, but now it's referred to as Taiwan's Silicon Valley, a tech-focused microcosm pipelining workers from school to university and into the world-leading semiconductor industry that is crucial to global supply chains. Continue reading...
Safety groups say images are so lifelike that it can be hard to see if real children were subject to harms in productionThe volume of sexually explicit images of children being generated by predators using artificial intelligence is overwhelming law enforcement's capabilities to identify and rescue real-life victims, child safety experts warn.Prosecutors and child safety groups working to combat crimes against children say AI-generated images have become so lifelike that in some cases it is difficult to determine whether real children have been subjected to real harms for their production. A single AI model can generate tens of thousands of new images in a short amount of time, and this content has begun to flood both the dark web and seep into the mainstream internet. Continue reading...
The forthcoming game is a nostalgic exploration of a city in summer. Its creative director explains how it helps players to feel they are making the world more beautifulHow do you make painting fun for those without an artistic bone in their body? Game developers have come up with a few answers - or at least, they've tried. There's the straightforward approach of something like Mario Paint, where players are handed a mouse accessory and creation tools similar to Microsoft Paint. In kami, a painter's brush is used as a weapon and a magic wand in a Zelda-like world. In The Unfinished Swan, the world (and the story) are gradually revealed by the player's spattered ink.Forthcoming painting game Ete is less about the process of making art on a canvas, and more about making players feel as if they are making the world more beautiful. It lets you make art without any of the friction. Like lots of games, Ete fulfils a fantasy through role playing, the fantasy of being a painter - and to do so, we assume your avatar is already a talented painter," says creative director Lazlo Bonin. Painting in Ete is not about skill, it's about creativity and enjoyment."Ete is out on PC on 23 July. Continue reading...
by Alexi Duggins, Hollie Richardson, Hannah Verdier a on (#6PA59)
In this week's newsletter: The audio superstar is back with a beach read' of a podcast, The Arc of Love. Plus: five of the best podcasts about death Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereThe True Story of the Fake Zombies
Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, founders of A16Z, plan to give large donations to former president's campaignThe co-founders of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture capital firm have announced their support for Donald Trump's bid for re-election, and plan to make substantial donations to back him further.Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, the heads of Andreessen Horowitz, commonly known as A16Z, revealed their plans in a sprawling 90-minute podcast, in which they argued that the future of American innovation" required a Trump victory. Continue reading...
In this week's newsletter: From Xbox Game Pass to PlayStation Plus, the new mainstream way to play games is costly, contradictory and most of all confusing Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereLike everyone, I have come to massively resent the insidious creep of subscription services. I started off with an affordable, shareable Netflix subscription, many years ago. Then came Spotify, then Disney+ when I had children, then Prime Video, all of which I could just about justify. Then my Fitbit started wanting to charge me to unlock features in a device I'd already bought. Google now charges me monthly to store in the cloud the photos I take on my Google phone. I pay yearly for an app that lets me look at guitar tabs. Last week I tried to buy some protein powder and discovered I could only do so if I committed to a minimum three-month supply. Egregious.As for gaming: I've been a subscriber to Xbox Live, on and off, since 2003. PlayStation Plus came later, and then Nintendo Online, very belatedly, with the arrival of the Switch. I don't play live-service games often, or I'd probably also be handing over the odd 8.99 for battle passes. Into this already fraught situation comes Microsoft, last week, with an update to its video game subscription offer that requires a spreadsheet to understand. Continue reading...
Do you feel uncharismatic and awkward in social situations? Aura upgrades are thankfully now available, according to a group of intrepid influencersName: Auramaxxing.Age: The word aura" comes from Latin and ancient Greek and originally meant a gentle breeze. These days it's more commonly used about a subtle pervasive quality emanating from someone. That's what we're talking about here. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6P951)
Latest Copilot+ PC is thin, light and speedy with a stunning screen, but can't live up to AI and battery life hypeSamsung's first take on Microsoft's new Arm-powered Copilot+ PCs is the Galaxy Book 4 Edge, which promises to finally deliver the speed and battery life to properly take on Apple's MacBook Air.The new ultra-thin and light laptop comes in a choice of 14in or 16in screen sizes and packs the very fastest of the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips, which aim to dethrone Intel as the PC laptop chips of choice. Continue reading...
Musk calls California bill banning school transgender notification policies last straw'Elon Musk announced on Tuesday he will move the headquarters of his companies X and SpaceX from California to Texas.In a post on Twitter/X, Musk cited California's new law banning school transgender notification requirements as one of the reasons for the move, calling it the last straw" and saying such bills [attack] both families and companies". Continue reading...
NullBulge group said it was leaking files from Disney's internal Slack channel to protect artists' rights'Hacktivists claim to have stolen more than a terabyte of data from Disney's internal chat platform and are leaking the information online in a protest against what they say is the company's anti-artist stance.The group, which calls itself NullBulge, has been active since at least May. It claims to be motivated by a desire to protect artists' rights and ensure fair compensation for their work". On Friday, it published the entirety of Disney's internal Slack channel online through the decentralised BitTorrent filesharing platform. Continue reading...
Craig Wright's case referred for potential perjury and forgery prosecution after losing legal battle with crypto firmsThe case of Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to be the creator of bitcoin, has been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service over a potential prosecution for perjury and forgery.In March, Wright lost a legal battle with a coalition of cryptocurrency businesses who had pre-emptively sued to prevent him from enforcing his claim in the courts. In a sign of the extent of his defeat, the presiding judge, Mr Justice Mellor, took the unusual step of issuing an oral verdict within seconds of the case concluding. Continue reading...
The designer of Sopa: The Tale of the Stolen Potato explains how his Colombian background informs the forthcoming gameSopa (the Spanish for soup") is a game about a young boy who goes to fetch a potato for his grandma, then stumbles upon a magical world at the back of the food cupboard. The pantry seems to get longer and longer," explains creative director Juan Castaneda. And when you're about to grab the sack of potatoes, you get pulled into this other world of fantasy and magical realism. So you go on all these adventures, and meet all these different characters, but at the end of the day, you're really just trying to get that potato for your grandma's soup."As video game quests go, this is fabulously mundane and makes a refreshing change from rescuing princesses in castles and saving lands in peril. However you soon realise there is more to it all than just lost spuds. There's this other layer to the story, and that's what the game is really about," says Castaneda. Each time you come back to the kitchen, things will have changed in unexpected ways, and each time you go off on an adventure, you're going to be picking up these hints about a mysterious traveller who went through this way long ago." Continue reading...
Tony Blair's powerful thinktank asked ChatGPT how AI might affect public sector jobs. Critics say the results were ... wonky Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereWhat will AI do to employment? It is, after will it kill us all?", the most important question about the technology, and it's remarkably hard to pin down - even as the frontier moves from science fiction to reality.At one end of the spectrum is the slightly Pollyannaish claim that new technology simply creates new jobs; at the other, fears of businesses replacing entire workforces with AI tools. Sometimes, the dispute is less about end state and more about speed of the transition: an upheaval completed in a few years is destructive for those caught in the middle of it, in a way that one which takes two decades may be survivable.More than 40 per cent of tasks performed by public-sector workers could be partly automated by a combination of AI-based software, for example machine-learning models and large-language models, and AI-enabled hardware, ranging from AI-enabled sensors to advanced robotics.The government will need to invest in AI technology, upgrade its data systems, train its workforce to use the new tools and cover any redundancy costs associated with early exits from the workforce. Under an ambitious rollout scheme, we estimate these costs equate to 4bn per year on average over this parliamentary term. Continue reading...
Riding a wave of nostalgia, the return of EA's beloved franchise has whet the appetite of gamers across different generationsSports videogame releases are usually drab affairs. New versions come out every year, and beyond roster updates and a few gameplay tweaks, they don't change that much from edition to edition. Unlike Grand Theft Auto aficionados, sports game fans don't plan midnight release parties.But EA Sports College Football 25, which will be released worldwide on 19 July, isn't a typical game. It may well be the most anticipated sports video game release ever in the US. And to understand why, we need to go back to the beginning. Continue reading...
Tech billionaire to donate extraordinary monthly sum to group focused on helping Trump win election, report saysElon Musk has said he plans to give $45m a month to a Super Pac focused on electing Donald Trump, starting in July, the Wall Street Journal has reported.The tech billionaire, who endorsed Trump two days ago, has already donated what was described as a sizable amount" to the America Pac, though the actual amount of the donation will not be made public in election filings until 15 July, Bloomberg reported. Continue reading...
Electric vehicles are batteries on wheels' that can put energy back into the National Grid when solar panels and windfarms do not provide much powerElectric cars make some people afraid of the dark. While the batteries produce much less carbon, they require much more electricity to run. This has prompted ominous warnings that Great Britain and other wealthy countries set on banning new petrol and diesel cars risk plunging their populations into darkness.In recent months British net zero-sceptical newspapers have warned that the shift to EVs would risk overwhelming the grid, and threaten catastrophic blackouts" when intermittent sun and wind fail to provide the necessary power. Another article claimed: It won't take an enemy power to put us all in the dark - just energy customers doing normal things on a normal winter's evening." Continue reading...
Creating a 3D avatar to increase a model's income brings up all sorts of issues, but this documentary seems uninterested in addressing themDoubles, doppelgangers, clones; twin visions have long fascinated directors and audiences alike. It's unnerving, however, when technologies that once belonged to the realm of science fiction are now realised in the present. A German model called Lale is interested in creating a 3D clone of herself and this documentary from Katharina Pethke taps into a new unsettling reality.The rationale behind the project sounds promising on the surface. As the company that offers the body scanning service to Lale explains, a 3D clone can take on a larger number of campaigns, without the hassle of paying an in-person crew, thus increasing Lale's income. What is striking, however, is that the firm's examples of 3D avatars are all of non-white models.With the recent push for more inclusivity in the fashion and modelling industry, could this be an easy way for brands to claim diversity without expanding their talent pool? Continue reading...
The military use of AI-enabled weapons is growing, and the industry that provides them is boomingA squad of soldiers is under attack and pinned down by rockets in the close quarters of urban combat. One of them makes a call over his radio, and within moments a fleet of small autonomous drones equipped with explosives fly through the town square, entering buildings and scanning for enemies before detonating on command. One by one the suicide drones seek out and kill their targets. A voiceover on the video, a fictional ad for multibillion-dollar Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems, touts the AI-enabled drones' ability to maximize lethality and combat tempo".While defense companies like Elbit promote their new advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) with sleek dramatizations, the technology they are developing is increasingly entering the real world. Continue reading...
Whistleblowers say contracts include restrictions requiring staff to seek permission before contacting regulatorsOpenAI whistleblowers have urged the US financial watchdog to investigate non-disclosure agreements at the startup after claiming the contracts included restrictions such as requiring employees to seek permission before contacting regulators.Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) typically bar an employee from sharing company information with outside parties but a group of whistleblowers are arguing that OpenAI's agreements could have led to workers being punished for raising concerns about the company to federal authorities. Continue reading...
A subclass of PFAS has been found near manufacturing plants and landfills, and in remote regions of the worldToxic PFAS forever chemicals" used in lithium ion batteries essential to the clean energy transition present a dangerous source of chemical pollution that new research finds threatens the environment and human health as the nascent industry scales up.The multipronged, peer-reviewed study zeroed in on a little-researched and unregulated subclass of PFAS called bis-FASI that are used in lithium ion batteries. Continue reading...
Videos of England football manager emblematic of growing internet trend for AI-generated memesIt is not the calm and thoughtful Gareth Southgate the nation is used to and, in the rough and ready world of internet humour, that is probably the point.Within hours of England walking off the pitch after winning the semi-final against the Netherlands, deepfakes of the team manager cropped up on social media, offering an expletive-filled, and deeply uncharacteristic, post-match take from the England manager. Continue reading...
The concept of a guaranteed income is gaining traction as a solution to the impact of AI and way to encourage more rewarding and socially valuable workWhen Elinor O'Donovan found out she had been randomly selected to participate in a basic income pilot scheme, she couldn't believe her luck. In return for a guaranteed salary of just over 1,400 (1,200) a month from the Irish government, all the 27-year-old artist had to do was fill out a bi-annual questionnaire about her wellbeing and how she spends her time. It was like winning the lottery. I was in such disbelief," she says.The income, which she will receive until September 2025, has enabled her to give up temping and focus instead on her art. It covers my living expenses, my rent, food and day-to-day stuff." Continue reading...
In Coventry, the GMB has been canvassing hard to represent workers officially - and the potentially historic result is due this weekOn a traffic island on the outskirts of Coventry, armed with handmade signs and a stack of orange bucket hats, a small but noisy team of organisers from the GMB union are taking on Amazon.More than 3,000 staff here - associates," as Amazon calls them - were given the opportunity to vote in a historic ballot last week that could force the company to recognise a union for the first time in the UK. It is one of several tussles over union recognition globally at the retail-to-cloud-services group founded by Jeff Bezos in his garage in 1994 and now worth more than $2 trillion. Continue reading...
Advertising to children is strictly regulated - but household brands are flooding the gaming platform Roblox with interactive marketing. Is this a danger to young users?In the blocky world of Chipotle Burrito Builder, players don the uniform of the Tex-Mex restaurant chain to make burritos for virtual customers. The available toppings are taken from Chipotle's real-world menu. Your shirt and cap are emblazoned with the Chipotle logo. And when the game launched two years ago, the first 100,000 players could earn Burrito Bucks" to exchange for a prize on Chipotle's website.Then there's Hyundai Mobility Adventure that lets you test-drive models of the Korean manufacturer's cars. Samsung Galaxy Station gives you a mock-up of the company's latest smartphone to take around extraterrestrial worlds. Telefonica Town challenges you to climb an assault course built of products from the telecommunication giant's catalogue. Vans World simply hands you a skateboard with which to bust a few kickflips across a park plastered with the shoe manufacturer's logo. Continue reading...
Jonathan Haidt's claims about the effects of devices on children's wellbeing have been criticised for lacking proof, but they tell us what we need to knowJonathan Haidt is a man with a mission. In his day job, he's a professor of ethics at New York University's Stern School of Business. But outside academia, he's a compelling campaigner. His mission: to alert us to the harms that social media and modern parenting are doing to our children. And his latest book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, pulls no punches. It is, said the New York Times, erudite, engaging, combative, crusading", which possibly explains why it has been on the newspaper's nonfiction bestseller list for 14 weeks (it is now at No 2).Haidt writes of a tidal wave" of increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too, as are older teens. He sees two factors that have caused this. The first is the decline of play-based childhood caused by overanxious parenting, which allows children fewer opportunities for unsupervised play and restricts their movement. This translates into low-risk childhoods in which kids don't have the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them. The second factor is the ubiquity of smartphones and the social media apps that thrive upon them. The result is the great rewiring of childhood" of his book's subtitle and an epidemic of mental illness and distress. Continue reading...
The absence of a body adds intrigue to this shot of the photographer's daughter on a rope swingPhil Doherty took this photograph on a family walk in a Warwickshire woodland in 2020. It was near the end of the first lockdown, and Doherty, his wife, Lisa, and their two daughters, Lulu andPearl, had taken the opportunity for a spot of rule-abiding recreation.We went to Oversley Wood and stopped by this rope swing. There was strong sunlight streaming through the leaves, creating pockets of brightness among the deep shadows of the trees," Doherty says. I'm always looking at light and shadow to create a strong image, and as Pearl was swinging back and forth, I noticed she would enter these pockets of light." Continue reading...
Guardrails' that previously existed removed as Meta says voters should be able to hear from presidential nomineesMeta has removed previous restrictions on the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Donald Trump as the 2024 election nears, the company announced on Friday.Trump was allowed to return to the social networks in 2023 with guardrails" in place, after being banned over his online behavior during the 6 January insurrection. Those guardrails have now been removed. Continue reading...
AT&T says a suspect was apprehended in connection with the hack, which included numbers customers texted or calledHackers stole call and text message records on nearly all" of AT&T's customers, the communications giant disclosed on Friday. The immense data breach took records of tens of millions of people's phone use from around a six-month period in 2022, along with a single day in January 2023. According to AT&T, a suspect has been apprehended.AT&T, which revealed the hack in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, stated that the data includes records of which numbers customers texted or called over a certain period of time, as well as the number of times the calls took place. The data doesn't include other kinds of personal information associated with the numbers or information on what was said during the interactions. Continue reading...
Regulators' findings suggest social network breached Digital Services Act and could be fined 6% of global turnoverElon Musk's X has been warned by the EU it potentially faces large fines after regulators said its blue-tick system for users is deceptive and in breach of its landmark social media rules. Musk responded with We look forward to a very public battle in court" late on Friday.Announcing preliminary findings from an investigation, the European Commission said the platform did not comply with the Digital Services Act. X faces fines of up to 6% of its global turnover if the preliminary findings are confirmed. Continue reading...
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