Technology | The Guardian

The HBO version of the post-apocalyptic has had rave reviews. From Silent Hill to Broken Sword, here are others that could really shine on the small screen

Internet dating can feel soul-destroying, unnerving and transactional. Couples explain how their love lives were transformed when they finally stopped swipingWhen Georgie Thorogood’s date made a sleazy joke about “horsey girls carrying whips”, she knew it was time to make a hasty exit. After meeting Tom through a dating app in the summer of 2021, she had been hoping for some polite conversation over a few drinks, maybe some romantic chemistry if she was lucky. What she got was a two-hour rant about his ex-wife and some creepy innuendo. “I knew straight away he wasn’t for me. I politely told him I didn’t want to see him again, but he took the rejection really badly. I work in music communications and at the time I was setting up a festival. He started getting aggressive and telling me that I was destined to fail,” she says. “I don’t know how he could possibly know that, as he didn’t ask me a single question about myself all night.”Her bad experience, which came after months of mindless swiping, was the final straw for Georgie, 40. “Not only did I find dating apps soul-destroying, I was also happy with my single life, so I decided to quit them completely and focus on that instead,” she says. “I found so many of the men on apps had serious issues, too. Another guy became abusive when I turned down an offer to meet for a walk in a remote location because it didn’t feel safe. You never know who people are online.” While Georgie acknowledges that people with emotional baggage aren’t exclusive to dating sites, she feels the apps give them a chance to hide their bad behaviour. “The problem is that you don’t have to reflect or make changes when something goes wrong – you can just swipe to the next person.” Continue reading...

Meta’s advisory board says policy impedes right to expression for women and trans and nonbinary peopleFacebook and Instagram’s parent company could soon free the nipple. More than a decade after breastfeeding mothers first held a “nurse-in” at Facebook’s headquarters to protest against its ban on breasts, Meta’s oversight board has called for an overhaul to the company’s rules banning bare-chested images of women – but not men.In a decision dated 17 January, the oversight board – a group of academics, politicians, and journalists who advise the company on its content-moderation policies – recommended that Meta change its adult nudity and sexual activity community standard “so that it is governed by clear criteria that respect international human rights standards”. Continue reading...

Video from 2016 was promoted by Elon Musk as evidence that ‘Tesla drives itself’A 2016 video that Tesla used to promote its self-driving technology was staged to show capabilities like stopping at a red light and accelerating at a green light that the system did not have, according to testimony by a senior engineer.The video, which remains archived on Tesla’s website, was released in October 2016 and promoted on Twitter by Elon Musk as evidence that “Tesla drives itself”. Continue reading...

One new provision targets senior managers at tech platforms who ignore Ofcom enforcement notices

Afghanistan’s hardline Islamist rulers had never carried a verification tick mark before the launch of Twitter BlueTwitter account verifications bought by the Taliban appear to have been removed, after many expressed outrage that the social media platform had given its blue check marks to Afghanistan’s hardline Islamist rulers.Twitter previously only gave blue “verified” check marks to accounts that were considered “active, notable and authentic accounts of public interest”. But since Elon Musk acquired the platform last year, users can buy them from the Twitter Blue service for a fee – an option at least two officials of the Taliban government in Afghanistan had exercised. Continue reading...

The Swedish-based electric carmaker has pulled ahead of rivals thanks to its no-factory model and Chinese partner, but its boss want to remove carbon from the production process too“I was never ever that car guy who was interested in designing a Ferrari,” says Thomas Ingenlath. It’s a surprising thing to hear from a former designer for Audi, Skoda and Volvo. It makes more sense for the chief executive of an electric car startup, Polestar, launched in 2017 as a subsidiary brand of Volvo.Ingenlath’s design ideals stretch way beyond car marques to include Apple products and high-end sports clothing. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: The government’s proposed legislation seeks to keep children safe from harmful content and hold tech CEOs accountable. Can it?

This desperately moving drama set in a zombie-ravaged US is a phenomenal blend of horror and heart, with a cast that could not be more perfect• The Last of Us recap episode one – welcome to the mushroom apocalypse! What if it wasn’t a flu-like virus that threatened the existence of humankind, but a parasitic fungus that used rising temperatures to evolve and switch hosts, from ants to humans? That is the terrifying premise of The Last of Us, another post-apocalyptic prestige drama in a TV landscape that, for understandable reasons, is stuffed with game-over scenarios. While its zombie skeleton brings immediate comparisons to The Walking Dead, its beating heart is more in line with last year’s Station Eleven, with which it shares a surprisingly steady and meditative pace.Much has been made of its origins as a video game, in part because the source material looked as if it might offer the best chance yet of a convincing transition from console to screen. The series was adapted by the game’s creator, Neil Druckmann, and Chernobyl’s showrunner, Craig Mazin, a combination that suggested it might buck the trend of video games reworked into another format. (Thirty years on, the Super Mario Bros film is still cited as a cautionary tale.)The Last of Us is on Sky Atlantic and Now in the UK, HBO in the US and Binge and Foxtel in Australia. Continue reading...

Ian Russell says inquest into daughter’s death is ‘unique’ opportunity to make online platforms saferMolly Russell’s father has called for a stronger UK online safety bill, including criminal sanctions for tech executives who endanger children’s wellbeing, after criticising social media platforms’ responses to a coroner’s report on his daughter’s death.Ian Russell said the inquest into the death of Molly, 14, was a “unique” opportunity for the tech industry and government to make online platforms safer. A coroner ruled in September that harmful online content contributed to the death of Molly, stating that she “died from an act of self-harm whilst suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content”. Continue reading...

Court documents reveal reasons for Awad Al-Qarni’s arrest – even though rulers are major investors in social media platformsA prominent pro-reform law professor in Saudi Arabia is facing the death penalty for alleged crimes including having a Twitter account and using WhatsApp to share news considered “hostile” to the kingdom, according to court documents seen by the Guardian.The arrest of Awad Al-Qarni, 65, in September 2017 represented the start of a crackdown against dissent by the then newly named crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Continue reading...

Some claim the rise in winter infections has been caused by the reduction of seasonal bugs during lockdowns. But experts are sceptical about these oversimplified explanationsThe deaths of at least 190 people, including 30 children, from the invasive bacterial infection group A streptococcus, or strep A, are the most extreme consequences of a wave of winter infections that have seemingly left most of the country coughing and sneezing. The parlous state of the nation’s health has prompted suggestions that we are now paying an “immunity debt” incurred by the reduction of common infections during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. But experts seem divided about whether the debt concept is genuine, let alone whether it explains the prevalence of non-Covid afflictions.As with so many of the debates about the outcomes of the pandemic, there do not appear to be simple answers – but no shortage of self-proclaimed “experts” ready to give them anyway. While there are good reasons to believe that the measures taken to reduce the spread of the coronavirus have broader implications for common infectious diseases, there is no one-case-fits-all explanation for the spate of winter bugs, much less any obvious conclusions to be drawn about pandemic management. Continue reading...

Investors are pursuing legal action against Virgin Galactic, claiming its carrier aircraft and space vehicle were not designed for regular space travelIn a desert basin in New Mexico, Richard Branson hopes history will be made later this year with the launch of Virgin Galactic’s first commercial flights to the edge of space, with tickets costing about $450,000 (£370,000) each.It is an ambitious schedule to launch the “world’s first commercial spaceliner” at Spaceport America, even though it is already more than a decade late. Continue reading...

An art historian, a critic and a gallerist are tasked with guessing whether a piece is by an important artist or a clever bot. It turns out it’s harder than it looksThe year 2022 was when AI-generated images went viral. Online, you may have come across very realistic yet suspiciously improbable images of, say, an astronaut riding a horse through space or an avocado doubling as an armchair.Numerous new generators – including Dall-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion – offer anyone with an internet connection the chance to conjure up their own strange apparition, simply by typing in a “prompt” for the AI. (For example, “astronaut astride horse on Mars”. Or, for this article, “Mark Rothko Abstract Expressionist oil painting” – yes, the image above isn’t a real Rothko.) The possibilities have been endless, the opportunity for meme-making infinite. Continue reading...

Ask the AI program a question, as millions have in recent weeks, and it will do its best to respond

For at least a decade, researchers have speculated that sex with robots is just around the corner but that is yet to materialiseThe man leans towards the woman on his couch. “What is your favourite meal?” he asks, his accent French. “Electricity,” she says, with a strong Scottish inflection. “It provides me energy and has a kick to it.”The slight, bespectacled, increasingly bemused man peppers her with questions as they sit. Her blond hair gleams, her dark-rimmed eyes are placid, her lips a full and glossy pout. “Can I call you Charlotte?” he asks. Continue reading...

Price of cheapest Model 3 saloon car dropped by £5,500 to £42,990 to combat slowing demand as carmaker shares dropTesla has cut the prices of its cars in the US and Europe by up to a fifth as it contends with slowing demand and increased competition.The US carmaker expanded its sales by 40% during 2022 to 1.3m, making it the world’s largest manufacturer of pure battery electric cars, ahead of China’s BYD. However, investors have started to worry that sales growth will be limited by economic slowdowns in some of its key markets. Continue reading...

Guardian science correspondent is put to the test in the panic-inducing VR world of a game that teaches breathing techniqueTethered to a chair, in a gloomy basement, I’m doing my best not to panic – by breathing in for four seconds, holding for seven, and slowly releasing for eight. But when a bloodthirsty monster appears at my feet and starts crawling towards me, I don’t need a dial to tell me that my heart is pounding, and I’m in imminent mortal danger.Welcome to the future of anxiety treatment: a virtual reality (VR) game that teaches you a breathing technique to help calm your nerves, and then pits you against a monstrous humanoid that wants to eat you, to practise deploying it in genuinely panic-inducing situations. Continue reading...

‘Compensation’ for CEO down from $99.4m in 2022 to an expected $49m for current yearThe Apple chief executive, Tim Cook, is expected to have his pay cut by almost 50% this year to about $49m (£40m) after the billionaire boss asked the company to “adjust his compensation” in the light of feedback from shareholders disappointed at the fall in the company’s share price.Cook, 62, who became CEO after the co-founder Steve Jobs stepped down before his death in 2011, was paid $99.4m in 2022 and $98.8m in 2021. But the company said in a regulatory filing late on Thursday night that it had set a “target compensation” of $49m for 2023. Continue reading...

Social media bosses who breach child safety rules may face jail if Ofcom given powers to prosecute

Postal service has been unable to send letters and parcels overseas since Wednesday due to hackingRoyal Mail has been hit by a ransomware attack by a criminal group, which has threatened to publish the stolen information online.The postal service has received a ransom note purporting to be from LockBit, a hacker group widely thought to have close links to Russia. Continue reading...

Lawsuit targets Voyager after Guardian investigation uncovered police partnership and company’s claims it could predict crimeMeta has sued to block a surveillance company from using Facebook and Instagram, alleging the firm, which has partnered with law enforcement, created tens of thousands of fake accounts to collect user data.A complaint filed on Thursday asks a judge to permanently ban Voyager Labs from accessing Meta’s sites and comes after a Guardian investigation revealed the company had partnered with the Los Angeles police department (LAPD) in 2019 and claimed that it could use social media information to predict who may commit a future crime. Continue reading...

The Louis Thorold Foundation, set up by Rachael and Chris Thorold in memory of their son, campaigns for safer roadsLouis Thorold was “just a perfect little baby, smiley and happy”, recalls his father, Chris. One of the five-month-old’s favourite toys was a plush elephant with crinkly ears. His mother, Rachael, remembers how relaxed Louis was, sleeping easily and even nodding off in her arms when she took him for weekly swimming lessons. “We were so happy, we thought we had a lifetime of days like this ahead.”Yet for eight weeks after her son was killed in a road accident that left her with catastrophic injuries, Rachael had no memory that she had even had a child. Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch; Sidebar Games

Workers received no warning before the termination of their jobs in December, shortly after Elon Musk’s takeover of the companyLaureta, a single mother and janitor for years at Twitter’s offices in New York City, would like Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest people and the new owner of the social media giant, to know just how he ruined her Christmas.Like other janitors at Twitter – and many other employees at the troubled company, which has shed thousands of staff – she said she never received any explanation for her sudden layoff. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: Investors threw millions at a coin themed on the Netflix hit – that never appeared. Find out how in The Squid Scam. Plus: five of the best podcasts about celebrity scandals

So much is happening, both wonderful and terrible – and it matters how we tell it. We can’t erase the bad news, but to ignore the good is the route to indifference or despairEvery crisis is in part a storytelling crisis. This is as true of climate chaos as anything else. We are hemmed in by stories that prevent us from seeing, or believing in, or acting on the possibilities for change. Some are habits of mind, some are industry propaganda. Sometimes, the situation has changed but the stories haven’t, and people follow the old versions, like outdated maps, into dead ends.We need to leave the age of fossil fuel behind, swiftly and decisively. But what drives our machines won’t change until we change what drives our ideas. The visionary organiser adrienne maree brown wrote not long ago that there is an element of science fiction in climate action: “We are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced. I believe that we are in an imagination battle.” Continue reading...

Media firm says personal data of UK staff members was accessed in ‘highly sophisticated’ cyber-attack last monthThe Guardian has confirmed it was hit by a ransomware attack in December and that the personal data of UK staff members has been accessed in the incident.The Guardian Media Group’s chief executive, Anna Bateson, and the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, confirmed the news in an update emailed to staff on Wednesday afternoon. Continue reading...

Princeton senior Edward Tian says GPTZero can root out text composed by the controversial AI bot, but users cite mixed results

In this week’s newsletter: The boom years of smartphone gaming have given way to a naked cash-grab that rewards player-unfriendly design

The story of how investigative journalists exposed the frightening abuse of software that can infect your phoneWhen asked what superpower they would wish for, quite a lot of people choose invisibility. The desire to be able to spy unnoticed on others appeals to something in our nature: a wish for knowledge without retribution.The arrival of the mobile phone, and then the smartphone, has brought that power of invisible oversight to governments willing to pay the comparatively small cost – some millions of pounds – of licensing invasive software that will silently monitor a phone. The most popular one (that we know about) is called Pegasus, created by an Israeli company called NSO. Continue reading...

A perfect storm of wider cultural and economic forces have been pulling the video games industry apart. Is this the year it remakes itself?There are, littered throughout the history of video games, certain years of radical, fundamental change. We can look at the major crashes in the US games industry in 1977 and 1983, where bloated software libraries and hardware gluts destroyed confidence in the medium and cleared out dozens of companies. We can also look at the arrival of the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn in 1994, which made 32-bit processors and rendered 3D visuals the entire focus of the industry, expunging a generation of competing products, from the Philips CD-i to the Atari Jaguar. I think 2023 could be one of those years of radical change, not because of some major new technical landmark, but because the structure of the games industry is now dissolving and remaking itself.First, we’re going to see a lot more consolidation this year, as major corporations bet on continued growth in the gaming sector. The big precursors were Microsoft’s 2021 purchase of Bethesda and Take-Two’s acquisition of Zynga last year, but that was just the beginning. Tech giants Amazon, Alphabet and Meta are circling the industry eyeing up legacy publishers such as Square Enix and Electronic Arts to get a foothold in the industry, and a neat leg up toward what they all think is the next big thing: the metaverse. But it’s Microsoft’s ongoing attempt to take over Activision, currently being investigated by competition regulators in the US, Europe and the UK, that will be a major focus during 2023. Continue reading...

The restoration of communications to the war-torn Ethiopian region after last month’s peace deal has ended two years of extreme and destructive isolation for TigrayansWhen Lemlem read online that phone lines had been restored to parts of Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region last month, she spent the entire night trying to call her elderly mother, who lives in the Tigrayan town of Adwa.“I tried maybe 20 or 30 times but the call wouldn’t go through,” Lemlem said from her home in Maryland in the US. “When I finally heard her voice, it was so emotional. We were crying together and I was just so happy. For two years, I didn’t know if she was alive.” Continue reading...

Doncaster, Hemel Hempstead and Gourock sites to close as well as seven delivery sites, as retailer prepares two new facilitiesAmazon has announced plans to shut three of its 30-plus UK warehouses and seven small delivery sites, affecting more than 1,300 jobs.Workers from the large warehouses in Doncaster, Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire and Gourock in western Scotland will be offered roles at other Amazon locations. Continue reading...

From February advertisers will no longer be able to see young users’ gender or type of posts they have engaged withFacebook and Instagram are to tighten restrictions around the data available to firms to target ads at teenage users, the platforms’ parent company, Meta, has said.From February, advertisers will no longer be able see a user’s gender or the type of posts they have engaged with as a way of targeting adverts to them. Under the enhanced restrictions, only a user’s age and location will be used to show them advertising, Meta said. Continue reading...

Inside the social video app’s new scandal. Plus, Musk continues to Trump tech and Apple might finally make the metaverse interesting

Sarah, 59, and Martin, 56, met playing Words with Friends in 2019. They live at opposite ends of the world, but can’t wait to be togetherSarah never imagined that her online word-game addiction would become more than a hobby. But at the end of 2019 it led to an unexpected, long-distance love story. “I was living in Germany but spending a lot of time with my daughter in Switzerland,” says Sarah, who left the UK with her husband when she was 20. “She had had a third baby and needed some extra help. I’d also been widowed in 2018 and was still feeling a bit disoriented.”The Scrabble-style game Words with Friends soon became a nice distraction. “You can play with anyone in the world,” she says. “I would often be sitting in my grandchildren’s rooms waiting for them to sleep while I played.” Continue reading...

Wildlife departments in Washington and Oklahoma have led the way as government officials find a new voice“If you encounter a cougar, never approach or offer it food. You are not a Disney princess.”“Most grandma/reindeer collisions are entirely preventable. Please give wildlife plenty of space.” Continue reading...

The father-son relationship in Sony’s smash hit shows how important actors have become to video games. Its creators discuss their blockbuster success – and the future of gamingIn Los Angeles last month, Al Pacino walked on stage at the Microsoft theatre in front of an audience of video game developers and performers to present a trophy at the Game awards. Looking pleased but mildly baffled, and struggling to read his autocue, he announced the winner: Christopher Judge, for his performance as Kratos in the video game God of War: Ragnarök. Dressed in a sparkling gold suit, Judge enveloped a surprised-looking Pacino in a giant hug before embarking on a 10-minute acceptance speech. “I was the last actor in California to read for this role,” he says. “Back then, if I’d known it was for a video game, I might not have taken it. Boy, how things have changed.”Back in the 00s, Sony’s God of War games were notable for several reasons – their jaw-dropping scale, the bite and immediacy of their combat, the sheer spectacle of their fantasy violence – but they were not exactly famed for their characters. Kratos, the protagonist, was an angry lump of muscle whose narrative arc mostly involved killing bigger and bigger things and getting more and more furious. So when Kratos and God of War returned in 2018 after a long hiatus, it was a surprise to find that not only had he left the realm of Greek mythology for Scandinavia, but he was now a widower, accompanied by a young son with whom he struggled to connect. Continue reading...

Is that Harry Kane and Stormzy arguing over a broken patio tile? This new, CGI-assisted comedy is astonishing to watch – but is it ethically OK?Spencer Jones beckons me into a Soho editing suite. “Do you want to see some of the stuff we’ve done so far?” he asks, readying a clip of his new ITV sketch show. It’s funny enough; a young impressionist does an impersonation of Tom Holland griping about something in his flat.But then Jones stands up and walks me through to a different room. He closes the door and opens up a laptop. “Now watch this,” he says, grinning. It’s the same clip: same script, same flat, same line delivery. But there’s one small difference – this time, incredibly, the sketch is being performed by Tom Holland. Except it isn’t. My jaw drops open, and my eyes start flitting around wildly, unable to compute what I’m seeing. In other words, I have just had my first experience of Deep Fake Neighbour Wars. Continue reading...

Work carried on as usual in the facility as workers were not informed of colleague’s death even as the body lay on the floorOn the morning of 27 December 2022 at the Amazon DEN4 warehouse in Colorado Springs, Colorado, 61-year-old Rick Jacobs died on the job after experiencing a cardiac event, right before a shift change. What happened next has angered his former colleagues.Witnesses say a makeshift barrier around the deceased worker using large cardboard bins was used to block off the area on the outbound shipping dock where the incident occurred, and workers criticized the response and lack of transparency about the incident. Amazon denied boxes were used to cordon off the area, but said managers stood around to make sure no one came near for privacy and security. Continue reading...

The British photographer didn’t want to climb Pulpit Rock in Dorset, but his wife didMatt Writtle wasn’t scared of heights in his youth, but says that over the years he’s become increasingly reluctant to take the risk. As such, the British photographer didn’t make it to the pinnacle of Pulpit Rock, on the Dorset coast, though his wife, Caroline, did. The couple were holidaying with their two young sons, Billy, six, and Thommi, four – a two-week affair of typical British weather and cloudy days by the water.Writtle took the shot from the rock opposite, on his iPhone 10. “I liked the juxtaposition of the young boy entering the frame to the left, and the old man exiting the frame to the right. The people look so small, like ants; the resulting shot is almost Lowry-esque. People have also suggested it reminds them of the evolution of man.” Continue reading...

As Amazon axes 18,000 roles and Tesla loses 65% of its value, we examine the causes of the glitch hitting Silicon ValleyAmazon announced 18,000 job cuts, Apple’s share price fell below $2tn (£1.7tn) and there was more bad news from Tesla: it has been another tough week for big US tech firms.But this has not been a one-off. The ongoing drama at Twitter since its takeover by Elon Musk in October has taken place against a backdrop of global economic uncertainty, retrenchment from aggressive expansion plans and China’s disruptive transition from Covid lockdowns to rocketing case numbers as restrictions ease. Continue reading...

AI-ovens, dual-display or 3D screen laptops and satellite SOS texting shine at Las Vegas tech showFrom colour-changing cars, dual-screen laptops and satellite emergency texts to AI-ovens and a urine-scanning smart toilet upgrade, the annual CES tech show in Las Vegas had more concepts of the future on show than ever before.The biggest consumer gadget show of the year was still quieter than pre-pandemic levels, with the global economic slowdown biting big tech along with everything else. Continue reading...

Information posted on a hacking forum in ‘one of the most significant’ breaches of users’ email addresses and phone numbersHackers stole the email addresses of more than 200 million Twitter users and posted them on an online hacking forum, a security researcher said on Wednesday.The breach “will unfortunately lead to a lot of hacking, targeted phishing and doxxing”, Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity monitoring firm Hudson Rock, wrote on LinkedIn. He called it “one of the most significant leaks I’ve seen”. Continue reading...

City agency approved raises for drivers by 7.42% per minute and 23.93% per mile but company filed lawsuitAt noon on Thursday, hundreds of Uber drivers gathered outside the company’s headquarters in downtown New York, and chants echoed across the 9/11 Memorial Plaza: “Shame on Uber.”Uber drivers were engaging in a 24-hour strike that began first thing on Thursday in response to Uber’s move to sue New York’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) for approving a raise and fare hike. Continue reading...

Administrators jailed for 32 years, and eight years, as activists warn of ploy to infiltrate websiteSaudi Arabia has infiltrated Wikipedia and jailed two administrators in a bid to control content on the website, weeks after a former Twitter worker was jailed in the US for spying for the Saudis.One administrator was jailed for 32 years, and another was sentenced to eight years, the activists said. Continue reading...

Company’s new feature hopes to challenge Google’s search engineMicrosoft is reportedly in the works to launch a version of its search engine Bing using the artificial intelligence behind ChatGPT, launched by OpenAI.The Information reported the news on Tuesday, citing two people with direct knowledge of the plans. Continue reading...

The US bank was forced to sell $5.2bn worth of assets for cash and booked a loss of $718m on those salesCustomers of the US bank Silvergate, one of the few mainstream financial organisations that focuses on providing services to the cryptocurrency sector, have pulled more than $8bn (£6.7bn) of their crypto-related deposits from the lender.More than two-thirds of customers’ deposits were withdrawn in the final three months of 2022, as the collapse of the FTX exchange reverberated around the cryptocurrency world. Continue reading...

Amazon boss blames economic uncertainty and recent rapid hiring while Salesforce cuts 8,000 roles, almost 1 in 10 staffThe jobs purge sweeping US tech firms has escalated as Amazon expanded staff-cutting plans to affect more than 18,000 workers and the software maker Salesforce said it would axe 8,000 employees.Amazon’s reductions are the biggest by a big tech firm over the past year and the largest set of layoffs in the company’s history. The online retailer’s chief executive cited “the uncertain economy” for the move and said Amazon had “hired rapidly over the last several years”. Continue reading...