Technology | The Guardian

The surreal Nothing, Forever, streaming 24 hours a day, is an eerie experiment in digital creativitySeinfeld went off the air in 1998, but it’s never really gone away – it’s been the subject of modern recreations, dedicated social media accounts and hip-hop/TV fusions. Its latest incarnation, however, is the oddest yet.Nothing, Forever is an endless, AI-generated version of the show that has been streaming on Twitch since mid-December. It tells the “story” – if you can call it that – of four characters, Larry, Fred, Yvonne and Kakler, who look like what would happen if Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer were sucked into a 1990s computer game. They spend their days discussing their lives and other trivial matters. And it never, ever stops: log on at any hour and there they are, talking about coffee quality or a difficult Monopoly game. Continue reading...

Everyone uses Wikipedia, but should it really be affecting what happens in court?Remember when loads of academics were confidently predicting that technology, from robots to AI, was about to destroy all our jobs? They were wrong. We went into Covid with record employment before the pandemic, not the robots, knocked a chunk of people out of the workforce.In fact, technology has done something almost worse: giving academics a whole new job producing studies showing how easily technology affects us even on important judgments, from hiring to court cases. Two came across my desk last week highlighting the danger. Continue reading...

Nicky Morgan and other Tory peers plan amendment to boost Ofcom’s powers to penalise social media firmsTougher rules are needed to target misogyny online as part of the online safety bill, a group of peers has said.Under the online safety bill, which is being finalised, social media firms will be legally required to abide by their terms and conditions, which generally bar misogynistic abuse. Failure to enforce them will result in fines and their services could be blocked by Ofcom, the online watchdog. Continue reading...

With 100m sales of its Switch console, a new Mario movie and even a California theme park, the Japanese tech giant is riding high again. What’s its secret?Every Nintendo fan remembers the game that converted them. Perhaps it was running and jumping around as Mario in an abstract, toylike playspace, thrilling at the lightness and precision of his movement. It could have been becoming hypnotised by falling Tetris blocks on the Game Boy’s tiny monochrome screen, or choosing a first Pokémon, marvelling at how the little collection of fat pixels representing your chosen critter instantly assumed an imagined personality. Millions of people had their first Nintendo moment during 2020’s lockdowns, moving to a virtual deserted island full of quirky neighbours in Animal Crossing.For more than 40 years, this Japanese giant of entertainment has been making video games that have shaped the tastes of the people who played them as children; there is surely no game developer working today who is untouched by its influence. Its latest console, meanwhile – the Nintendo Switch, released in 2017 – recently became the fastest ever to reach 100m sales, and stands a good chance of becoming the bestselling console ever. Barring an extremely unlikely sales slump over Christmas, the Switch will leapfrog to No 3 on the bestselling list when Nintendo announces its quarterly results this week. Only the DS and Sony’s PlayStation 2 are ahead of it. Continue reading...

Jenny Radcliffe is a professional ‘people hacker’ – someone who claims she can get past anyone and get in anywhere. No building is secure. How does she do it? Plus, an extract from her memoir‘Do I look like someone to mess with?” says Jenny Radcliffe, folding her arms in a really-don’t-mess-with-me kind of way. Her tattoos seem to be making the point, too. On her left forearm is a Latin phrase – facta non verba, actions not words – with a pair of devil’s horns; on her right, a feather, from the wings of an angel. Which is she, I wonder. Her boots – DM-like, many eyelets – suggest no angel; but the T-shirt is emblazoned with “Trust Me”.Radcliffe has an unusual job: she’s a social engineer. “Also known as a professional burglar, physical penetration tester … though it’s difficult to say that one to old ladies on trains,” she says. Yes, I can see that. Continue reading...

The verdict comes after a three-week trial that pitted shareholders against the billionaire and company CEOElon Musk and Tesla have been cleared of wrongdoing in a lawsuit over a pair of tweets from the executive that investors say cost them billions of dollars.After less than two hours of deliberation wrapping up a three-week trial, a jury in San Francisco ruled on Friday that the Tesla CEO had not deceived investors with two tweets posted in August 2018 about a Tesla buyout that never happened. Continue reading...

We must recognise the critical importance of strong copyright law and fair remuneration, writes Christian ZimmermannArtists, illustrators and photographers have often led the way in embracing new technology. The concerns that creators such as Harry Woodgate have about AI programs (‘It’s the opposite of art’: why illustrators are furious about AI, 23 January) that “rely entirely on the pirated intellectual property of countless working artists, photographers, illustrators and other rights holders” must be heeded.Evidence published recently by the House of Lords, gathered from the first-hand experience of visual artists, galleries and experts, demonstrates that the government’s proposed copyright exception will have far-reaching, detrimental consequences. Continue reading...

Alphabet CEO says company well positioned in AI field, as analysts say ChatGPT has reached 100m usersGoogle is to make its chatbot technology available to the public in “the coming weeks and months” as it responds to the success of ChatGPT, a Microsoft-backed artificial intelligence chatbot that has become a global phenomenon after it was made available free of charge.Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google’s owner, Alphabet, said the use of AI had reached an “inflection point” and the company was “extremely well positioned” in the field. Continue reading...

Take a break from news about real-life megacorps raking in billions while we all struggle to pay our gas bills, and revisit gaming’s most evil companiesSquaresoft’s environmentalist fable pitches a small group of eco-rebels against the might Shinra Electric Power Company – part energy supplier, part terrifying interplanetary dictatorship. The designers were prescient in their imagining of a multifaceted company equally adept in weapons, genetic engineering and politics, and with its own 24-hour news channel to help with propaganda. Continue reading...

Move to pay-for-access application program interface continues platform owner’s push for revenue

Juan Manuel Padilla asked the AI tool how laws applied in case of autistic boy’s medical funding, while also using precedent to support his decisionA judge in Colombia has caused a stir by admitting he used the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT when deciding whether an autistic child’s insurance should cover all of the costs of his medical treatment. He also used precedent from previous rulings to support his decision.Juan Manuel Padilla, a judge in the Caribbean city of Cartagena, concluded that the entirety of the child’s medical expenses and transport costs should be paid by his medical plan as his parents could not afford them. Continue reading...

Facebook parent company Meta bucks trend with better earnings than expected, as Apple sees first profit miss in seven yearsThe A-Team of big tech – Apple, Amazon and Alphabet – all delivered disappointing results on Thursday a day after Facebook owner Meta bucked the gloomy trend in technology, delivering better-than-expected results.Apple shares slid more than 4% on Thursday after the company posted a disappointing first-quarter earnings report, including rare misses on revenue, profit and sales. Continue reading...

Unprecedented take-up may make AI chatbot the fastest-growing consumer internet app ever, analysts sayChatGPT, the popular artificial intelligence chatbot, has reached 100 million users just two months after launching, according to analysts.It had about 590m visits in January from 100 million unique visitors, according to analysis by data firm Similarweb. Analysts at investment bank UBS said the rate of growth was unprecedented for a consumer app. Continue reading...

Information about trial in Chile, Peru and Costa Rica has since been taken down after being shared across help centre pagesNetflix has mistakenly launched a set of guidelines for cracking down on password sharing to global users.The streaming service said the guidelines being trialled in Chile, Peru and Costa Rica had been posted accidentally across its help centre pages including in the US on Wednesday, but had since been taken down. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Hollie Dance, who fought legal battle to stop her son’s life support being switched off, says he received threatening messagesFrom discovering her son unconscious with a ligature over his head to the lengthy but ultimately unsuccessful legal battle to stop his life support being switched off, Archie Battersbee’s mother has experienced heartbreak that is hard to imagine.That pain has now been compounded by the recent discovery that Archie was bullied online in the months before the catastrophic brain injury on 7 April last year, she told the Guardian. Continue reading...

Phone from 2007 with 2 megapixel camera and 8GB storage had sat on Karen Green’s shelf for years before she realized its worthA first generation, unopened 2007 iPhone is expected to sell for more than $50,000 when it goes to auction on Thursday.The phone, which has a 2 megapixel camera and 8GB of storage, was given to Karen Green as a gift when she got a new job, Business Insider reported. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: The giant of British journalism starts his post-Channel 4 career with his new interview show. Plus: five of the best podcasts for women in midlife

Exclusive: Dutch MEP hopes site will give early warning of suspicious tactics such as use of front organisationsA group of MEPs are launching a website for European parliament staff and EU officials to raise the alarm about “shady lobbying” by big tech firms and other interest groups.Paul Tang, a Dutch Social Democrat MEP who is co-leading the initiative, said the “lobby leaks hotline” would be an early warning system and was necessary as the parliament had faced “shady lobbying” from powerful tech companies seeking to influence its decisions. He cited practices such as so-called astroturfing, where large companies use front organisations to represent their interests by the back door. Continue reading...

Parent company of Facebook and Instagram reports $32bn in revenue for fourth quarter, prompting rise in stock priceMeta investors got some good news in the social media company’s latest earnings report on Wednesday, which showed a smaller drop in revenues than analysts had expected.Meta, which also owns Instagram and Whatsapp, reported $32bn in revenue for the fourth quarter, which drove a rise in its stock price in extended trading on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Top-end Android phones with improved sustainability announced alongside Galaxy Book 3 laptopsSamsung’s latest top-end Galaxy S23 Android phones hope to tempt users with larger batteries, faster chips and improved photography, including one of the first 200MP next-generation cameras.Announced alongside a range of new Galaxy Book 3 Windows laptops on Wednesday, the Galaxy S23 Ultra superphone leads the line equipped with new camera technology and a stylus. Continue reading...

PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, PC; EA Motive/EA

Washington officials appear to confirm deal to restrict export of semiconductor manufacturing technology to ChinaA Washington official has made the most direct comments by a US authority to date acknowledging the existence of a deal with Japan and the Netherlands for those countries to impose new restrictions on exports of chipmaking tools to China.“We can’t talk about the deal right now,” said Don Graves, deputy commerce department secretary, on the sidelines of an event in Washington. “But you can certainly talk to our friends in Japan and the Netherlands.” Continue reading...

Company co-founded by Mike Lynch hit by wave of criticism of its sales, marketing and accounting practicesThe value of Darktrace has plummeted to a record low after the emergence of two new short sellers betting against its business, as the British cybersecurity firm was hit by a new wave of criticism of its sales, marketing and accounting practices.The company, which earlier this month warned of slowing numbers of new customers signing up for its artificial intelligence-led security products, has attracted the attention of Quintessential Capital Management (QCM) and the London-based Marshall Wace, one of the world’s biggest hedge funds with $60bn (£49bn) in client assets. Continue reading...

The former president was banned from Instagram and Facebook following the Jan 6 attacks, but Meta argues that new ‘guardrails’ will keep his behaviour in check. Plus: is a chatbot coming for your job?

Some social media users are building a following through ‘feelgood’ videos, in which, for instance, they give flowers to a stranger. The stranger then becomes their clickbait. Is there anything we can do to stop this?Maree only wanted to buy some shoes. A pair that she liked the look of had gone on sale, so she made a trip into the city to try them on. It was late in the day in June, mid-winter in Melbourne, and the shopping centre was quiet. After making her purchase, Maree stopped for a coffee. “And that’s when it happened,” she says.A young man approached her holding a posy of flowers. He asked Maree to hold them for him as he put on his jacket. “I wish I’d trusted my instincts and said no,” she says. “It was all so quick.” Maree took the flowers – then the man walked away, wishing her “a lovely day”. She held them out after him, bemused. Continue reading...

Is this the TV episode of the year? It’s a big call so early on in 2023, but it’ll take something incredible to top this brave, poignant, heartbreaking character studyThis article contains spoilers for The Last of Us TV series. Please do not read unless you have seen episodes one to three …Wow. Where to start? I’ll just come out and say it – I think that’s the single best episode of TV that will be broadcast all year. Continue reading...

Shou Zi Chew will face legislators amid concerns over the social media app’s alleged collusion with Beijing in accessing user dataAs the US legislative battle over TikTok continues to escalate, Shou Zi Chew, the chief executive of the video-sharing app, will make his first appearance before Congress to testify next month.Chew will testify before the House energy and commerce committee on 23 March, Republican representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers confirmed in a statement on Monday, as scrutiny of the Chinese-owned app over data privacy concerns grows. Continue reading...

Retail group says incident affected shoppers at JD, Size?, Millets, Blacks, Scotts and Millets Sport brandsThe fashion retailer JD Sports said the personal and financial information of 10 million customers was potentially accessed by hackers in a cyber-attack.The company said incident, which affected some online orders made by customers between November 2018 and October 2020, targeted purchases of products of its JD, Size?, Millets, Blacks, Scotts and Millets Sport brands. Continue reading...

Healthcare’s standard genome is mostly based on one American. As we enter the era of personalised medicine, this bias has drawbacks for much of the world’s populationIn June 2000, Bill Clinton, the then US president, stood smilingly next to the leaders of the Human Genome Project. “In genetic terms, all human beings, regardless of race, are more than 99.9% the same,” he declared. That was the message when the first draft of the human genome sequence was revealed at the White House.The single string of As, Ts, Cs and Gs eventually became the first human reference genome. Since its publication in 2003, the reference has revolutionised genome sequencing and helped scientists find thousands of disease-causing mutations. Yet at its core is a somewhat ironic problem: the code meant to represent the human species is mostly based on just one man from Buffalo, New York. Continue reading...

Pop was once all about four guys and their instruments. Now that gang mentality has been blown away by tech-savvy individualsWhen David Crosby helped found the Byrds, the idea of being in a band like the Beatles was intoxicating. The musician, who died last week, and his bandmates were so obsessed with the Beatles that they watched A Hard Day’s Night and went straight out to buy the same instruments.A modern-day Crosby would be well advised not to bother – bands are almost entirely absent from the music charts. Only four new songs by groups made it into the official Top 100 singles of last year, which was dominated by solo acts and a smattering of classics by the likes of Fleetwood Mac and Arctic Monkeys. Continue reading...

In the three months since Musk bought Twitter for £44bn, thousands have been sacked and the company has nosedived. Here, staff tell of a firm in disarray and an owner whose reputation is also plummetingIn April 2022, Elon Musk acquired a 9.2% stake in Twitter, making him the company’s largest shareholder, and was offered a seat on the board. Luke Simon, a senior engineering director at Twitter, was ecstatic. “Elon Musk is a brilliant engineer and scientist, and he has a track record of having a Midas touch when it comes to growing the companies he’s helped lead,” he wrote on the workplace messaging platform Slack.Twitter had been defined by the leadership of Jack Dorsey – a co-founder who was known for going on long meditation retreats, fasting 22 hours a day, and walking five miles to the office – who was seen by some as an absentee landlord, leaving Twitter’s strategy and daily operations to a handful of trusted deputies. To Simon and those like him, it was hard to see Twitter as anything other than wasted potential. Continue reading...

Investigation reveals more than 150 fake firms, many with ties to China, are targeting people online, breaking their hearts – and emptying their bank accountsA woman meets a man online. They flirt. Then, after a few weeks, they begin imagining a future together. Fast forward a few months and one of them has had their heart broken and been defrauded of their life savings.It sounds like a classic romance scam, but it isn’t. This is “pig butchering”: a brutal, elaborate and rapidly expanding form of organised crime, often involving criminal syndicates, modern-day slaves and victims around the world. Continue reading...

The economic downturn, US lawsuits and the fear of rising tech rivals could be reasons for the firm’s “code red” alert, but it still has an AI ace up its sleeveIn a strange way, the best thing that could have happened to Google (now masquerading as Alphabet, its parent company) was Facebook. Why? Because although Google invented surveillance capitalism, arguably the most toxic business model since the opium trade, it was Facebook that got into the most trouble for its abuses of it. The result was that Google enjoyed an easier ride. Naturally, it had the odd bit of unpleasantness with the EU, with annoying fines and long drawn out legal wrangles. But it was the Facebook boss, Mark Zuckerberg – not Google’s Larry Page, Sergey Brin and their adult supervisor Eric Schmidt – who was awarded the title of evil emperor of the online world.This sometimes enabled Google to fly below the regulatory radar and avoid public criticism. Its relative immunity may also have been fostered by credulity induced by its “Don’t be evil” motto. What may also have helped is the way that, over the years, it fumbled quite a few things – Google+, Google Wave, Google Glass, Knol and Google Reader, to name just five. On the other hand, it also managed to create useful and successful products – Gmail, for example, plus Google Maps, Google Scholar, Google Earth and Google Books. And, of course, it made inspired acquisitions of YouTube in 2006 and of artificial intelligence startup DeepMind in 2014. Continue reading...

The photo-sharing app leads to some pretty random images – and with them unexpected but useful style lessonsThe social media platform BeReal, in which users take a photo during a random two-minute period every day, is not an obvious place to look for style inspiration. Unlike Instagram, which is full of selfies taken specifically to show off a new coat, a good hair day or a flattering lift mirror, BeReal shows everyone at their most humdrum. If Instagram is a glossy, coffee table book compilation of high days and holidays, Be Real is a blooper reel of life’s tea-bath-bed days.If you are on the app, you get a notification to take a picture of what you are doing at a random time of day – and the reverse camera snaps a selfie while you are doing it. It means you are much more likely to be in the park in your dog-walking coat or sitting at your laptop in an old hoodie than you are to be dolled up. Continue reading...

Subtitles aren’t just for the hard of hearing, with Netflix reporting 40% of its viewers regularly use them. But do we just enjoy them or is there a more annoying reason?There’s a reason Bradley Johnston watches “literally everything” with subtitles on. It’s not an accessibility issue – the 25-year-old is a native English speaker and isn’t hard of hearing. He is “the kind of TV viewer that just doesn’t want to work for it”.“Like, if there’s a subtle moment some people might miss that’s integral to the plot, let me know about it,” he says. Continue reading...

Petty France, London

The N64 shooter was one of the most innovative games in history – and the myths around its creation still intrigueLife moves pretty slow on a video game magazine when the last pages are being sent to the printer. As a writer on Edge, I’d have to be available in the office to write captions and headlines, but often we were there long into the night as the art team designed pages. So the writers and subs would have nothing to do but wait and play games. And for many months, the game we played was GoldenEye.Released two years after the film, into a market where tie-ins were never exactly epoch-making products, it’s fair to say expectations were low for the N64 shooter. But this was a shooter by Rare, the veteran Midlands-based developer of Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct, and the game that would introduce a lot of players to the concept of using an analogue stick to look around in a 3D game – it’s difficult to overstate how important that was. Continue reading...

Game Freak/Apple; iPhone

I really did have more time on my hands when I quit addictive online platforms. But I missed connecting with friends and discovering unexpected inspirationA year into the pandemic, in early 2021, I was spending most of my time online. I sat and I scrolled – on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – letting the latest horrifying news wash over me, or watching videos of cute animals, or messaging bored friends about our mutual states of crisis.The more I scrolled, the more all-consuming it became. I found myself instinctively reaching for my phone whenever I could. I would write a paragraph of a piece with a tight deadline, then have a browse on Twitter as a treat. I would watch TV and simultaneously check Instagram during scenes that lost my attention; even in bed, I would scroll to get to sleep and wake up to my phone’s blue light. Continue reading...

ChatGPT has been causing a stir since its launch last year. The chatbot’s ability to produce convincing essays, stories and even song lyrics has impressed users, and this week attracted a multibillion-dollar investment from Microsoft. Ian Sample speaks to Prof John Naughton about how ChatGPT works, hears from author Patrick Jackson about how it will change publishing, and asks where the technology could end upAfter launching in November, ChatGPT became an immediate hit that has both entertained and alarmed its users. Given a command or question, the chatbot is able to return convincing essays, simple recipes and even life advice in a matter of seconds. This impressive feat is performed by a large language model that lies behind its interface. Using a staggering amount of text drawn from the internet, the model builds up words and sentences based on statistical probability. It’s been described as a vastly scaled-up version of predictive text messaging. The result is a technology that has attracted a multibillion-dollar investment from Microsoft, and got many wondering how viable their jobs might soon become.Ian Sample speaks to the Observer columnist Prof John Naughton about how ChatGPT works and what could be next for this technology, and hears from the children’s author Patrick Jackson on how he plans to use it and why he’s enthusiastic about how it could change his work Continue reading...

The extreme features of the Rezvani Vengeance – including electrified door handles and blinding strobe lights – are wholly in tune with lethal trends in the US market Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: For 45 years, the sci-fi series has influenced the visual and narrative language of countless games, not just films – and shows no signs of slowing down

CEO of electric carmaker says finance was ‘not an issue’ but he did not have binding commitments from investorsElon Musk expected strong financial support when he tweeted that he would take Tesla private in 2018, but lacked specific commitments from potential backers, according to testimony he gave on his third day of questioning in a San Francisco federal court.Musk is accused of defrauding investors by driving up the price of Tesla stock by tweeting on 7 August 2018 that he had “funding secured” to take the electric carmaker private. Continue reading...

Social media platform abandoned its offices near Piccadilly Circus after Elon Musk takeover, and was evicted from Singapore officeTwitter is being sued by landlords in San Francisco and London after failing to pay rent on its offices, as new owner Elon Musk takes on extreme cost-cutting strategies that reportedly include simply not paying the bills.The crown estate in London, which manages property belonging to King Charles III, filed a claim against Twitter in the high court in the UK capital last week. The alleged rental arrears relate to office space near Piccadilly Circus in central London, according to the BBC. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: American universities and legislators are blocking access to the China-owned app over privacy concerns – but fans say the choice should be theirs

While the fraudsters I’ve encountered are often cunning, sooner or later they get carried awayFTX’s HQ, we now know, was not your typical one. CEO Sam Bankman-Fried ran his business from a $40m Bahamian penthouse named the Orchid, complete with Venetian plaster walls and a grand piano. The lot was nestled beside a championship golf course and a mega-yacht marina. Since Amazon doesn’t deliver to the Bahamas, private jets did the job instead.It wasn’t your typical corporate HQ – but then, FTX is not your typical corporation. It’s bankrupt, dragged down by its own financial abuses, with its chief executive facing prison. Yet while FTX has made headlines, its tale is not as unusual as you might think. Continue reading...

Company says deal with OpenAI will involve deploying artificial intelligence technology across its productsMicrosoft has announced a deepening of its partnership with the company behind the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT by announcing a multibillion dollar investment in the business.It said the deal with OpenAI would involve deploying the company’s artificial intelligence models across Microsoft products, which include the Bing search engine and its office software such as Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. Continue reading...

Popular role-playing game is being cut off due to a dispute between US developer and its Chinese partnerMillions of Chinese players of the roleplaying epic World of Warcraft (WoW) will bid a sad farewell to the land of Azeroth, with the game set to go offline after a dispute between the US developer Blizzard and its local partner NetEase.Massively popular worldwide, particularly in the 2000s, WoW is an online multiplayer role-playing game set in a fantasy medieval world. It is known for being immersive and addictive, and players can rack up hundreds of hours of game time. Continue reading...

US investment group typically buys stakes in underperforming firms and seeks changes to way they are runThe US activist investor firm Elliott Investment Management has taken a multibillion-dollar stake in Salesforce, the business software company that owns the Slack messaging platform.Elliott, which typically buys stakes in underperforming companies and seeks changes to the way they are run, said it was looking forward to working “constructively” with the San Francisco-based company, without revealing any strategic proposals. Continue reading...

Faster and easier to repair, the Intel version is best yet. But the Arm model isn’t ready for prime timeMicrosoft’s latest Windows 11 tablet gets faster and easier to fix in the Surface Pro 9, while offering more options than ever before. But is it still the best PC tablet going? Only if you pick the right one.Microsoft has brought its two high-end tablet lines under one model name. The standard Surface Pro 9 costs from £1,099 ($999.99/A$1,649) without a keyboard and continues where the Surface Pro 8 left off in 2021, fitted with new faster 12th-generation Intel Core i5 and i7 chips and an improved internal design.Screen: 13in LCD 2880x1920 (267 PPI) 120HzProcessor: Intel Core i5 or i7 (12th generation)RAM: 8, 16 or 32GBStorage: 128, 256, 512GB or 1TBGraphics: Intel Iris XeOperating system: Windows 11 HomeCamera: 10MP rear, 5MP front-facing, Windows HelloConnectivity: Wifi 6E, Bluetooth 5.1, 2x Thunderbolt 4/USB-4, Surface ConnectDimensions: 287 x 209 x 9.3 mmWeight: 879g (without keyboard) Continue reading...