Technology | The Guardian

Justice department lawsuit alleges tech giant illegally prevented competition by restricting access to its software and hardwareThe US government on Thursday filed a sprawling antitrust case against Apple, alleging that the tech giant has illegally prevented competition by restricting access to its software and hardware. The case is a direct challenge to the company's core products and practices, including its iMessage service and how devices such as the iPhone and Apple Watch connect with one another.The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Jersey, alleges that Apple has monopoly power in the smartphone market and uses its control over the iPhone to engage in a broad, sustained, and illegal course of conduct". The complaint states that the case is about freeing smartphone markets" from Apple's anticompetitive practices, arguing that the company has thwarted innovation to maintain market dominance. Continue reading...

Channel 4 News finds 255 British people including its presenter Cathy Newman to have been doctored into explicit imagesMore than 250 British celebrities are among the thousands of famous people who are victims of deepfake pornography, an investigation has found.A Channel 4 News analysis of the five most visited deepfake websites found almost 4,000 famous individuals were listed, of whom 255 were British. Continue reading...

It was the biggest online game in lockdown. Now the National Videogame Museum has collected players' experiences to find out what it meant to themToday is the first day of your new life on this pristine, lovely island. So, congratulations!" says Tom Nook, the benevolent tanuki landlord, a few minutes into Animal Crossing: New Horizons. (Nook is often besmirched online, but you can't argue that he's extremely welcoming.) Many players read this comforting message at a destabilising and frightening time in the real world: Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out on Nintendo Switch on 20 March 2020, a few days before the UK entered its first Covid lockdown.This was fortuitous timing. When we were all stuck at home, the game let us plant our native fruits, tend to our flowers and see what the town shop had on offer, repaying our extensive loans (interest-free, thankfully) to Tom Nook as a way of escaping the chaos and daily death tolls. We opened the gates to our islands and welcomed friends and strangers into our pristine little worlds. As real life crumbled, we started anew with bespectacled cats, sheep in clown's coats and rhinos who looked like cakes. Continue reading...

The Seinfeld star hears from female friends like Sally Field and Billie Jean King in the return of Wiser Than Me. Plus: five of the best paranormal podcasts Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereDial F for Football

For decades, Eliezer Yudkowsky has been trying to warn the world about the dangers of AI. And now people are finally listening to him. But is it too late?You can read more from Alex Hern, the Guardian's UK tech editor, by signing up to his newsletter TechScape.The AI Does Not Hate You and The Rationalist's Guide to the Galaxy by Tom Chivers are available right now. Continue reading...

Noland Arbaugh, paralyzed after diving accident, received implant in January but experts caution that procedure is in early daysElon Musk's brain-chip startup Neuralink livestreamed its first patient implanted with a chip playing online chess.Noland Arbaugh, the 29-year-old patient who was paralyzed below the shoulders after a diving accident, was playing chess on his laptop and moving the cursor using the Neuralink device. Continue reading...

Platform to make its debut on New York stock exchange on Thursday with a market value of $6.4bnReddit will enter a new era as a publicly traded company with a market value of $6.4bn after the social media platform's initial public offering was priced at $34 per share.The price, announced late on Wednesday, came in at the top of the target range set by Reddit's investment bankers as they spent the past few weeks gauging investor demand for the stock. It sets the stage for Reddit's shares to begin trading Thursday on the New York stock exchange under the ticker symbol RDDT in the largest initial public offering by a social media company in years. Continue reading...

This wacky Japanese game leaves a lifelong impression on everyone who plays it, if only because they can't get its theme music out of their head Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereMy parents were somewhat sceptical of video games when I was growing up. I did have a SNES and then an N64 as a child, but I was allowed to play them only at weekends, so on Fridays I would come home from school and binge on Mario 64 with a huge pack of Haribo Tangfastics. My gaming horizons didn't broaden until I was a teenager, when I started earning enough of my own money to buy myself a PlayStation 2 and I started hanging out on forums with other nerds whose gaming worlds were significantly broader than mine.And the PlayStation 2 had some weird games. The N64 did to an extent - I nurture an enduring fondness for Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon - but not like Sony's console. There was Dark Cloud and Monster Hunter, Yakuza and Mojib-Ribbon, God Hand and kami and Ribbit King, which is still, as far as I know, the only game about frolf (frog golf). Continue reading...

PlayStation 5 (version tested), Xbox One, PC; Capcom

Reddit's IPO is worrying for users - big money has a nasty habit of ruining our favourite sitesLike many people who were laid off and house-bound during the Covid lockdowns, I spent an unfathomable amount of time learning an arcane skill that in no way would bolster my CV. Bookbinding was a hobby many of my friends and family were surprised I'd taken up - I wasn't particularly skilled with my hands, and until then my life had largely revolved around technology and the internet.I spent hours learning complicated stitching techniques, the chemical composition of adhesives, and how to determine by touch where paper was made. All of my learning took place on a subreddit - a kind of bulletin board or forum on the website Reddit - called r/bookbinding, where a small online community of bookbinders would offer tips and advice on projects I was working on, completely free of charge. In my mind, it was as good as a pricey art school, providing a supportive, enthusiastic community that allowed me to learn the skill at my own pace - and without going bankrupt in the process.

Watchdog accuses US tech firm of not negotiating in good faith' with publishers over use of their contentGoogle has been fined 250m (213m) by French regulators for breaching an agreement over paying media companies for reproducing their content online.France's competition watchdog said on Wednesday that it was fining the US tech company for breaches linked to intellectual property rules related to news media publishers. The regulator also cited concerns about Google's AI service.Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report Continue reading...

Groups of drivers backed a bill setting minimum pay, but the two tech companies say it'd make riders' fees unsustainableUber and Lyft claim they will cease operating in the Minneapolis area in protest of a minimum pay ordinance that the city council voted to approve last week.The bill, to go into effect on 1 May, would establish a minimum pay of $1.40 per mile and $0.51 cents per minute for rideshare drivers, with a $5 per ride minimum. The city council voted to override the mayor's veto of the ordinance, prompting Uber and Lyft to threaten to leave the region in response. Continue reading...

British tech pioneer Mustafa Suleyman will be chief executive of organisation focusing on consumer products and research

US firm hopes to lead in artificial intelligence and other sectors - and has built a model that could control humanoid robotsThe chipmaker Nvidia has extended its lead in artificial intelligence with the unveiling of a new superchip", a quantum computing service, and a new suite of tools to help develop the ultimate sci-fi dream: general purpose humanoid robotics. Here we look at what the company is doing and what it might mean. Continue reading...

PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC; Pieces Interactive

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A new proposal aims to bring greater oversight to AI development, from deepfakes and cheapfakes' to electoral misinformation, but it could highlight a divide between parties Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereThe politics of AI regulation became a little clearer this weekend, after an influential Labour thinktank laid out its framework for how the party should approach the topic in its manifesto.From our story:The policy paper, produced by the centre-left Labour Together thinktank, proposes a legal ban on dedicated nudification tools that allow users to generate explicit content by uploading images of real people.It would also create an obligation for developers of general-purpose AI tools and web hosting companies to take reasonable steps to ensure they are not involved in the production of such images, or other harmful deepfakes. Continue reading...

Autonomy co-founder accused of intimidating people who raised concerns before 2011 HP takeover and inflating software firm salesThe British entrepreneur Mike Lynch will return to court in San Francisco on Tuesday after prosecutors used the opening day of his criminal trial to paint him as a dominating, controlling, intimidating boss" who orchestrated a huge fraud.Lynch, co-founder of the UK software company Autonomy, stands accused of artificially inflating the software firm's sales; misleading auditors, analysts and regulators; and intimidating people who raised concerns before its blockbuster takeover by Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011. Continue reading...

Founder of Identitarian Movement, Martin Sellner, preaches superiority of European ethnic groups and was banned from Twitter in 2020A far-right Austrian who received donations from and communicated with the Christchurch terrorist before the 2019 attack has had his X account restored, with X owner Elon Musk replying to one of his tweets.The founder of the so-called Identitarian Movement, Martin Sellner, who preaches the superiority of European ethnic groups, was banned from Twitter in 2020 under the former management along with dozens of other accounts linked to the movement amid criticism over the platform's handling of extremist content.Sign up for Guardian Australia's free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup Continue reading...

Plaintiffs in Murthy v Missouri argue White House requests to take down coronavirus misinformation violate first amendmentThe supreme court heard oral arguments on Monday in a case that could upend the federal government's relationship with social media companies and with lies online. Plaintiffs in Murthy v Missouri argue that White House requests to take down coronavirus misinformation on Twitter and Facebook constitute illegal censorship in violation the first amendment.The arguments began with Brian Fletcher, the principal deputy solicitor general of the justice department, making an argument that none of the government's communications crossed the line from persuasion into coercion. He also pushed back against descriptions of events in lower court rulings, stating that they were misleading or included quotations taken out of context. Continue reading...

Shigeichi Negishi's invention invites us to cast off humility and take a shot at singing stardom. His legacy will be credited - and blamed - for us living out our popstar fantasiesReceived wisdom holds that haughty music critics, grinding our axes on fans' beloved pop stars, are nothing more than failed musicians. This has always struck me as slander - not of critics, who certainly can be bitter and mean, but of supposedly failed musicians. How, after all, does one fail at music? To suggest success rides on certain technicalities, like talent or a career, gravely underestimates music's draw, and nowhere is the lie more spectacularly exposed than in karaoke.Here is an arena of musical greatness in which incompetence is the house style. Delusions of grandeur, haywire pitch, weird stage presence? Join the party. On that valorising little stage, failed musician" becomes the most entertaining role in the business. Continue reading...

Every ransom paid gives criminals the message that cyber-attacks work and that it's worth doing again, says Felicity Oswald of the National Cyber Security CentreThe British Library should be applauded for its refusal to pay the cybercriminals who targeted it last year (Ransomware groups warned there is no money in attacking British state, 12 March). At the National Cyber Security Centre, which is part of GCHQ, we have long shared the view of our law enforcement partners that paying ransoms should not be condoned, encouraged or endorsed. Doing so does not guarantee a return of access to data or computers, and in fact makes it more likely that the victim will be targeted in future.Every ransom that is paid gives criminals the message that attacks work and that it's worth doing again. We are committed to working with our partners - including internationally through the Counter Ransomware Initiative - to make the UK the hardestpossible target for ransomware attacks. But we cannot do this in isolation. By responding to its attack in the transparent way that it has, the library has set a great example. Weencourage all organisations toread its instructive review.

Exclusive: Lack of online skills and access creates digital divide that amplifies other exclusions, says reportAlmost half of UK families with children lack the online skills or access to devices, data and broadband required to participate in today's digital society, research shows, with an expert saying this divide is an amplifier of other exclusions".Research shared exclusively with the Guardian found that 45% of households with children did not meet the threshold. Families from low socioeconomic backgrounds in deprived areas and households outside London were among those who were less likely to meet it. Households from minority ethnic backgrounds and those with disabled parents were twice as likely to fall below it. Continue reading...

Owen Diaz sued the carmarker in 2017, and though no details are available earlier settlement numbers ranged from $3.2m to $137mTesla has settled with a former employee in a long-running discrimination case that drew attention to the electric vehicle maker's treatment of people of color.Owen Diaz, who was awarded nearly $3.2m by a federal jury last April, reached a final, binding settlement agreement that fully resolves all claims", according to a document filed Friday with the US district court in San Francisco. Continue reading...

The Irish writer on a sumptuous Francis Ford Coppola film, swimming in winter and the thrill of using a dumb phoneWriter Nicole Flattery was born in Kinnegad, County Westmeath, in 1989. She studied theatre and film at Trinity College Dublin, followed by a master's in creative writing, and won the White Review short story prize in 2017. Her award-winning short story collection Show Them a Good Time was published in 2019, and her writing has appeared in publications including the Stinging Fly, the Guardian and London Review of Books. Her debut novel, Nothing Special, explores female friendship, fame and identity in 1960s New York; it is published in paperback by Bloomsbury on 28 March. Continue reading...

Company denies that Tim Cook deceived investors when he said iPhone sales were strong weeks before revenue warningApple has agreed to pay $490m to settle a class-action lawsuit led by the UK's Norfolk county council.The class action alleged chief executive Tim Cook misled investors about a steep downturn in iPhone sales in China that culminated in a jarring revision to the company's revenue forecast. Continue reading...

ChatGPT and Gemini discriminate against those who speak African American Vernacular English, report showsPopular artificial intelligence tools are becoming more covertly racist as they advance, says an alarming new report.A team of technology and linguistics researchers revealed this week that large language models like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini hold racist stereotypes about speakers of African American Vernacular English, or AAVE, an English dialect created and spoken by Black Americans. Continue reading...

The photographer was intrigued by where this man was going in the middle of New York with a dog and a paintingI hope this photo makesothers smile," photographer Erik S Lieber says. Where isaman in the middle ofNew York City goingwith a dog and apainting?" Lieber was heading home from a physical therapy session just around the corner of Lafayette Street and Spring Street in SoHo, when he saw his subject about to cross the street. I like the expression onhis face, the contrast of the two things in hishands," he says. The whole shot makes me curious: what is hedoing? What is he thinking? Who is he?" He shot using an iPhone 14 Pro Max and edited with the Hipstamatic app.I come from a filmand darkroom background as a photographer, so digitally processing my images isakin to going into the darkroom. I played around with the clarity, highlights and shadows, and applied some filters, including converting to black and white, which Ifind lends itself well tostreet photography." Continue reading...

Senators have indicated they will take their time to decide on the bill that would force China-based ByteDance to divest from the appUS senators want the chamber to take its time in deciding whether to back a House of Representatives bill that would force China-based ByteDance to divest from the short video app TikTok within six months or face a total ban.The House voted 352-65 on Wednesday, just eight days after the proposal was introduced. There is broad support in the Senate for taking action to address national security threats from foreign apps like TikTok but no agreement on the right approach. Continue reading...

Fast food chain working to resolve problem but denies it has been hit by cybersecurity attackMcDonald's restaurants in multiple countries including the UK and Australia have been hit by a technology outage", which the fast food chain denied had been caused by a cybersecurity attack.Australia, the UK, Japan and China were among the markets where services were affected, with restaurant, drive-through and online orders hit. Continue reading...

Every child interviewed by media watchdog had watched violent material on the internetViolent online content is now unavoidable" for children in the UK, with many first exposed to it when they are still in primary school, research from the media watchdog has found.Every single British child interviewed for the Ofcom study had watched violent material on the internet, ranging from videos of local school and street fights shared in group chats, to explicit and extreme graphic violence, including gang-related content. Continue reading...

How does the bill define AI, how will it protect consumers from abuse, and what do the big tech companies think about it?The European Union's proposed AI law was endorsed by the European parliament on Wednesday, and is a milestone in regulating the technology. The vote is an important step towards introducing the legislation.It is now expected to be rubber stamped by a council of ministers, becoming law within weeks. However, the act will come into force in stages, with a cascade of deadlines for compliance over the next three years. Continue reading...

This Country star asks for more book recommendations as she returns in Educating Daisy. Plus: five of the best podcasts about scammers Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up here53 Minutes

CEO of China-based company says vote is disappointing' and that it will do all it can to protect the platformThe House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that would require the TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the United States.The vote was a landslide, with 352 Congress members voting in favor and only 65 against. The bill, which was fast-tracked to a vote after being unanimously approved by a committee last week, gives China-based ByteDance 165 days to divest from TikTok. If it did not, app stores including the Apple App store and Google Play would be legally barred from hosting TikTok or providing web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications. Continue reading...

Tech such as laptops, tablets and instant messaging has more positive effect on wellbeing, says thinktankExposure to new technologies including trackers, robots and AI-based software at work is bad for people's quality of life, according to a groundbreaking study from the Institute for the Future of Work.Based on a survey of more than 6,000 people, the thinktank analysed the impact on wellbeing of four groups of technologies that are becoming increasingly prevalent across the economy. Continue reading...

The Tesla CEO's suit says the company abandoned founding mission of openly sharing its technology to better humanityOpenAI denounced Elon Musk's lawsuit against the company in a legal filing on Monday, describing the Tesla CEO's claims as frivolous" and intended only to advance his commercial interests".The filing, a response to Musk suing OpenAI earlier this month over allegations that it abandoned its pledge to help humanity, rejects many of the core assertions in Musk's suit. The company denies that it ever broke what Musk calls its Founding Agreement", stating that no such contract ever existed. Continue reading...

More than 90% of new cars sold in Norway are electric. And it all started with some pop stars driving around in a jerry-built Fiat PandaI'm kneeling on the snow outside the king's house, impersonating a 1980s heart-throb, with a man named Harald and an electric car. It's a situation that probably needs some explanation.Harald isn't the king, although the king of Norway is also called Harald; we just happen to be outside the monarch's residence, a handsome red manor. I'm in Stavanger to find out how, in a world where transport contributes about 20% of CO emissions, Norway came to lead the world in electric car take-up. In 2023, 82.4% of private vehicles sold in the country were electric. In January, the figure was 92.1%. The goal is to hit 100% by next year. Continue reading...

Francesa Mani told her mother she would not be a victim after fake images were circulated around her New Jersey schoolIn October last year Francesa Mani came home from school in the suburbs of New Jersey with devastating news for her mother, Dorota.Earlier in the day the 14-year-old had been called into the vice-principal's office and notified that she and a group of girls at Westfield High had been the victims of targeted abuse by a fellow student. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: Hear me out ... but the traffic-dodging app may have started a domino effect that will bring down the Tories Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereThere's a theory I've been floating around for a while that I want to try on you: Google's 2013 acquisition of Waze sealed the election for Keir Starmer.I know, but bear with me.If you want to read the complete version of the newsletter please subscribe to receive TechScape in your inbox every Tuesday. Continue reading...

The best way to stop children getting out of their depth? Talk to them - about everything from trivial beefs to misused emojisI got a message from an ex-colleague who used to be fun and is now an agitator preaching alt-right" nostalgia to the gerontocracy. Whatever it was he wanted, I would have told him to stick it, but it just so happened that I really disagreed with it: a cross-party group campaigning to restrict mobile phone use among children.As reliably as bad things will happen to kids, people will blame it on phone use. Maybe there is a crisis in their mental health, or someone has been bullied online, or blackmailed over an image they have sent, or they've joined a criminal gang or undertaken a murderous enterprise or self-harmed: it is almost inconceivable that, somewhere in the story, a smartphone won't have played a part. Those affected often wish they had limited phone use, or at the very least, they keenly regret how little they knew what was going on with their child, who was, of course, always on his or her phone. Then politicians and the commentariat get involved, leveraging the grief and trials of others for discursive advantage, preaching measures to schools that they're often doing already, lecturing parents to return to the dumb phone" or ban the devices altogether for their kids. Continue reading...

A simple and endearing game creation tool has me and thousands of others creating little shareable interactive games instead of pawing at the news on our phones

Ex-president's newfound support comes after Joe Biden said he'd sign legislation that could ban the app in the USDonald Trump, who flirted with a US ban on the Chinese owners of TikTok while president, has come out in favor of the popular phone app.There are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it," Trump told CNBC on Monday, saying that without it you can make Facebook bigger and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people". He said that, while he still believes TikTok is a national security risk, other apps are a risk as well, and singled out the Meta-owned platform: I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections." Last week, he said banning TikTok would help Facebook and Zuckerschmuck double their business", referring to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Continue reading...

Cryptocurrency rises as UK financial regulator says it will allow trading of crypto-backed securitiesBitcoin has reached a new record price of almost $73,000 (57,000), as the UK financial regulator said it would allow the trading of cryptocurrency-backed securities.The cryptocurrency hit a fresh high of $72,720 as of Monday evening having last week overtaken its previous November 2021 high of nearly $69,000. Continue reading...

Company plans to raise up to $748m from sale of 22m shares, some of which have been set aside for users

Even after an overhaul of the Kids Online Safety Act brings it closer to passing, lawmakers, backers and critics are at oddsSharp divisions between advocates for children's safety online have emerged as a historic bill has gathered enough votes to pass in the US Senate. Amendments to the bill have appeased some former detractors who now support the legislation; its fiercest critics, however, have become even more entrenched in their demands for changes.The Kids Online Safety Act (Kosa), introduced more than two years ago, reached 60 backers in the Senate mid-February. A number of human rights groups still vehemently oppose the legislation, underscoring ongoing divisions among experts, lawmakers and advocates over how to keep young people safe online. Continue reading...

Canteen/Playtonic Friends; PC

Confronted by the huge salaries on offer in the US, London boardrooms are lobbying to be allowed to make their own bosses even wealthierThere was a sharp intake of breath last month when the pharmaceuticals group AstraZeneca cemented chief executive Pascal Soriot's position as the best-paid FTSE 100 boss with a 17m pay package, up from 15.3m a year earlier. The latest award brings to 137m the amount he has earned since joining in 2012.While it drew the anger of corporate governance experts, Soriot's generous payout was just a fraction of the sums his counterparts at the biggest US companies take home. Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Google's parent company, stands as the highest-earning boss on the US-based S&P 500, with a $226m pay packet in 2022. Continue reading...

Some business owners will be ready to cash out in the near future, but old tech could decrease the value of their firmsClunky, old tech is costing the US a fortune. According to a recent column in the Wall Street Journal, it would take more than $1.5tn to fix and costs the US $2.41tn a year in cybersecurity and operational failures, failed development projects, and maintenance of outdated systems".This technical debt" lurks beneath the shiny and the new in an accumulation of quick fixes and outdated systems never intended for their current use, all of which are badly in need of updating", according to the Journal. Continue reading...

Moguls extol the fruits of artificial intelligence, but seek to hide its science from public viewIn 1914, on the eve of the First World War, HG Wells published a novel about the possibilities of an even greater conflagration. The World Set Free imagines, 30 years before the Manhattan Project, the creation of atomic weapons that allow a man [to] carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city". Global war breaks out, leading to an atomic apocalypse. It takes the establishment of a world government" to bring about peace.What concerned Wells was not simply the perils of a new technology, it was also the dangers of democracy. Wells' world government was not created through democratic will but imposed as a benign dictatorship. The governed will show their consent by silence," England's King Egbert menacingly remarks. For Wells, the common man" was a violent fool in social and public affairs". Only an educated, scientifically minded elite could save democracy from itself". Continue reading...

In an extract from her memoir, Lucy Sante reveals how she lived with the feeling of being the wrong gender into her 60s, when a smartphone app gave her the inspiration to take action