Technology | The Guardian

Shares delisted and top execs reportedly fired as world’s richest man closes deal to buy social media platformThe world’s richest man, Elon Musk, has completed his $44bn acquisition of Twitter, amid warnings from politicians and campaigners that hate speech on the platform must be held in check.The social media group confirmed the deal in a brief filing on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday morning, disclosing the deal had closed the day before. Shares in the company have been suspended and will delist on 8 November, capping a chaotic saga that began when the Tesla CEO first announced his plans to take the tech business private in April. Continue reading...

Donald Trump says he is happy Twitter is in ‘sane hands,’ as SEC filing confirms the Tesla billionaire has bought the social media platform with over 230m usersHow have Twitter users reacted? The Guardian’s Matthew Cantor in San Francisco has taken a look.Richard Murphy, economic justice campaigner and professor of accounting practice at Sheffield University, says: Continue reading...

The $44bn deal will give world’s richest man control of social media platform with more than 230m usersElon Musk has completed his $44bn takeover of Twitter, taking control of the company and reportedly firing several top executives, including the chief executive, Parag Agrawal.The world’s richest man tweeted “the bird is freed”, in a reference to Twitter’s corporate logo, just hours before a court-ordered deadline to buy the business expired. Continue reading...

‘Free speech absolutist’ could reinstate Donald Trump’s account and press ahead with staff cutsAfter a months-long fight over whether Elon Musk would become its new owner, Twitter appears to have entered a new chapter with the reported exit of several top executives.Ahead of a Friday deadline for the Tesla CEO to complete his $44bn deal to buy the social media company, it was widely reported that Twitter’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, the chief financial officer, Ned Segal, and the head of legal policy, trust and safety, Vijaya Gadde, were ousted. Continue reading...

The company was saved by its oldest technology, desktop computers, with sales worth of $11.5bnApple’s quarterly earnings on Thursday revealed that the company is weathering the ongoing tech downturn better than its competitors, reporting revenue and profit that topped Wall Street targets.Revenue rose 8% this quarter to $90.1bn, above estimates of $88.9bn, while net profit was $1.29 a share, topping with the average analyst estimate of $1.27 a share, according to data from the market research firm Refinitiv. Continue reading...

Company sees drop in after-hours trading after issuing guidance on the holiday quarter that worried investorsAmazon shares dropped close to 20% in after-hours trading on Thursday after the company said its all-important holiday shopping season would be smaller than expected.The company is the latest tech giant to disappoint Wall Street this week. After enjoying phenomenal growth during the pandemic, Amazon has struggled to contain costs as inflation and rising interest rates have taken their toll. The company has slowed the rollout of new facilities, leased out some warehouse space and enacted a hiring freeze in parts of its business. Continue reading...

Virtual reality gamble is not paying off as Mark Zuckerberg appears to be going out on a limb with avatarsAfter shares in Facebook’s parent, Meta, slumped by as much as 25% in the wake of abysmal quarterly results, critics intensified their calls for its chief executive to abandon his astronomically expensive pivot to the “metaverse” – a 3D virtual world intended to replace much of real-world socialising.“The cost of Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse ambition is clearer than ever,” said Rachel Foster Jones, a thematic analyst at GlobalData. “Meta has put its entire business on the line for the metaverse, which still doesn’t exist, and the gamble is not paying off. Continue reading...

Internet safety groups say withdrawal of proposed legislation from next week’s Commons schedule leaves children at continued riskThe government has been criticised for endangering children by failing to pass its online safety bill, after it confirmed that the change of prime minister had caused yet another delay to the proposed legislation.With no known date for when the bill will return to the Commons, internet safety groups warned that any further delay would continue to place children at risk. Continue reading...

Sell-off that began overnight continues after Mark Zuckerberg’s company reports halving of profitsInvestors wiped $80bn (£69bn) off the market value of Facebook and Instagram’s owner, Meta, after Mark Zuckerberg’s company reported profits had halved during the third quarter as advertisers reined in spending amid the global economic downturn.The 25% tumble in Meta’s share price since Wednesday evening has knocked billions off the personal wealth of Zuckerberg, its chief executive and largest shareholder. Continue reading...

Tweet comes as advertisers fear one of his first moves as chief will be to restore Donald Trump’s accountElon Musk has claimed he has “acquired Twitter” in a post to the social network reassuring advertisers it will stay a safe place for their brands, amid fears one of his first actions as chief executive will be to restore Donald Trump’s account.After months of uncertainty over whether or not his $44bn acquisition of the social media platform would go through, the Tesla chief executive’s post is the strongest acknowledgment yet that the deal is expected to be sealed before its deadline of 5pm in Delaware on Friday. Continue reading...

Speculation is rife about whether the insurer will pay a hacker who claims to have extracted 200GB of files

Study says deployment of technology in public by Met and South Wales police failed to meet standardsPolice should be banned from using live facial recognition technology in all public spaces because they are breaking ethical standards and human rights laws, a study has concluded.LFR involves linking cameras to databases containing photos of people. Images from the cameras can then be checked against those photos to see if they match. Continue reading...

The performance-capture body suits, the annoying helmet cams, the makeshift props … actors describe the experience of making video games ‘where there’s nowhere to hide’The Call of Duty series is the action-movie blockbuster of the video game world. Loud, violent and filled with crazy stunts, these globetrotting military romps put their fictitious heroes through incredible physical danger, usually involving plane crashes, collapsing skyscrapers and vast firefights on sinking cruise liners.So what is it like to actually star in one? Continue reading...

Tesla CEO changes his profile to ‘Chief Twit’ as Friday deadline to finalize his takeover deal nearsElon Musk paid a visit to Twitter’s headquarters ahead of an end-of-week deadline to close his deal to buy the company, posting a video of himself in the company’s San Francisco lobby carrying a sink.“Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!” he tweeted on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Reuters learns US DoJ launched investigation last year after more than a dozen crashes, some fatal, involving Autopilot systemTesla is under criminal investigation in the United States over claims that the company’s electric vehicles can drive themselves, three people familiar with the matter said.The US Department of Justice (DoJ) launched the previously undisclosed investigation last year following more than a dozen crashes, some of them fatal, involving Tesla’s driver assistance system known as Autopilot, which was activated during the accidents, the people said. Continue reading...

Metallopolymer conducts electricity and can be painted, sprayed or moulded into any shapeA plastic material that has metallic properties and remains stable even when heated, chilled, left in the air or exposed to acid has been revealed, with researchers saying it could prove valuable in wearable electronics.What’s more, the material can be made into any shape, the researchers say. Continue reading...

Firm says it has no choice but to switch from proprietary Lightning port to the USB standard in EUApple will ditch the Lightning connector on its iPhones, the company has confirmed, after European regulators decided all smartphones should have USB charging as standard in two years’ time.New EU rules require all phones sold after autumn 2024 to use the USB-C connector for their charging ports. The oval-shaped plugs are already standard on other consumer electronics such as e-readers, games consoles, laptops and the vast majority of new Android phones. Continue reading...

Aileen Barratt of @tindertranslators shares what makes her laugh online, including Adam Levine memes, Saturday Night Live and a horse called Steven

Owner Alphabet reveals first decline since it began reporting streaming site’s performance separately two years agoYouTube’s long battle against TikTok has started to take its toll after its parent company, Alphabet, reported a decline in revenue at the video-streaming site.The fall, from $7.2bn (£6.2bn) in 2021 to $7bn this year, is the first since Alphabet started reporting YouTube’s performance separately two years ago, and marks a financial slowdown at the once dominant internet video hub. Continue reading...

In his 36-year career, Kojima has become one of the world’s best-known game directors – and he has never been keener to welcome fans into his worldOn 8 July 2022, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was delivering a political campaign speech outside the Yamato-Saidaiji Station in Nara City, Japan, when a man approached and shot him in the back using a homemade firearm. Even before Abe died from his injuries, footage of the assassination had been posted online. Social media users began to speculate as to the identity and motive of the killer. On the internet forum 4chan, a site notorious for its anarchic, often hateful trolling, an anonymous user posted a photograph of the video game director Hideo Kojima, claiming this “left-wing extremist” was the perpetrator.If the post was intended to bait the gullible, it worked. The far-right French politician Damien Rieu shared the images on Twitter, where Kojima – who has more than three million followers, and obviously had nothing to do with what happened to Shinzo Abe – began to receive dozens of accusatory messages. Rieu eventually deleted the tweet and published an apology, but not before Kojima had been identified as Abe’s killer on Greek and Iranian news channels. Continue reading...

After streamer complaints of a toxic community culture, slashes in earnings and an unsustainable work model, what next for the Amazon-owned site?

Companies ‘should not make meaningful decisions based on technology not backed by science’The information commissioner has warned companies to steer clear of “emotional analysis” technologies or face fines, because of the “pseudoscientific” nature of the field.It’s the first time the regulator has issued a blanket warning on the ineffectiveness of a new technology, said Stephen Bonner, the deputy commissioner, but one that is justified by the harm that could be caused if companies made meaningful decisions based on meaningless data. Continue reading...

App Store update undercuts a key feature of non-fungible tokens by banning their use to unlock contentApple is facing new accusations of anti-competitive behaviour after changing the rules on non-fungible token-powered apps and adding more paid-for promotions to the company’s App Store.Apple introduced the changes as part of a number of updates to the rules it requires app developers to abide by in order to publish software for iPhones and iPads. Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch; Platinum Games/Nintendo

Platform apologises after users across the world report issues sending messagesWhatsApp, the messaging platform, was starting to come back online and the company said the issue has been fixed after users across the world reported problems earlier on Tuesday.At about 07.50 GMT, the outage reporting site Downdetector had shown more than 68,000 users in the UK had reported problems with the app. Issues were also reported by 19,000 users in Singapore and 15,000 in South Africa. Continue reading...

Medibank says it is in communication with the hacker, but declined to say whether it would pay any demands made

A study suggests the video platform is failing to filter false claims and rhetoric in the weeks leading up to US midterms

Uber said it would appeal against the decision, which judge said ‘may well’ affect other drivers’ status and entitle them to workers’ rights and protectionsA group of New Zealand Uber drivers have won a landmark case against the global ridesharing company, forcing it to treat them as employees, not contractors, and entitling them to a suite of worker rights and protections.New Zealand’s employment court ruled on Tuesday that the drivers were employees, not independent contractors. While the ruling applies specifically to the case of four drivers, the court noted that it may have wider implications for drivers across the country. Continue reading...

The company’s secret sauce is what populates its For You Page, which predicts the videos that will pique a viewer’s interest

Celebrity and trainspotter are not words you see together very often. But Francis Bourgeois’ unique style and infectious enthusiasm is proving to be a ‘hellfire’ hitHow fast can you run?” Francis Bourgeois asks, not waiting for an answer. It’s 9am and we’re barely done with bleary-eyed introductions on platform 5 at Willesden Junction in London. Now the 22-year-old is legging it towards the exit, weaving through the throngs of Thursday- morning commuters. He’s into the ticket hall, through the barriers, down the street and up a grotty roadside staircase. In the centre of a footbridge, he comes to a halt. Bourgeois catches his breath and breaks into a smile – proper ear-to-ear grin – as he looks over the crisscrossing railway tracks sprawling towards the city ahead.“Last night I did a lot of planning,” he says, “trying to find this morning’s best London train action. And passing through Willesden now are your standard passenger trains, and aggregate and intermodal freight services, but also…” he cuts himself off, hearing something in the distance. “There it is,” he says, as a train appears on the horizon right on cue. “It’s the British Pullman,” he informs me, “one of the most luxurious trains in the UK today.” Continue reading...

The app has grown at breakneck speed to surpass the internet behemoths in downloads

While taking shots of her daughter during a holiday in France, memories of the photographer’s own youth flooded backIt was a stiflingly hot day in the south of France and editor and photographer Gerry Brakus and her 15-year-old daughter, Honor, had gone indoors to cool off. Along with her husband – the couple are both half English, half French – and beloved dog Rudy, the cavapoo, they were holidaying near Avignon. “I spent a lot of my own childhood in France,” Brakus says, and when she photographed her daughter there, “my old childhood memories came rushing back – things I’d completely forgotten.”“The French are very resistant to change, very traditionalist, so the interiors and colours have hardly moved on at all,” she adds. “I’m never deliberately looking for something that emulates my childhood; it’s just bizarre how similar it all is – like revisiting that time in vivid, high definition.” Continue reading...

Report cites concerns over foreign investors funding Twitter takeover and increasingly strategic role in Ukraine of StarlinkUS officials are considering whether to subject some of Elon Musk’s business ventures to national security reviews, including his proposed acquisition of Twitter and his satellite internet company Starlink, according to a report.Bloomberg wrote on Friday that Biden administration officials were concerned by the Tesla chief executive’s plan to buy Twitter in a deal part-funded by non-US investors and his recent threat to pull the plug on the Starlink service to Ukraine, as well as the publication of a series of tweets containing proposals over the Ukraine conflict favourable to the Putin regime. Continue reading...

Cybersecurity specialists raise concern over potential for claims about integrity of leadership ballot

The media giants have allegedly released ‘new’ podcasts mirroring those made by the likes of Gizzi Erskine and Pandora Sykes. So why is it so hard to make a case against them?Claims of intellectual property theft have long been a contentious issue within the world of podcasting. It’s a podcast wild west out there – an expansive, creative landscape with concepts seemingly being borrowed, adapted and pillaged. In the last couple of weeks alone, two David v Goliath pod battles have again raised the question: why does it seem so easy to get away with stealing podcast ideas?Award-winning food writer Gizzi Erskine, 43, and Sydney Lima, 29, are the co-creators and hosts of the hit Spotify Original podcast Sex, Lies & DM Slides, which launched in 2020. The pair are now accusing Spotify of “daylight robbery” and claim that they have been unceremoniously ousted from their podcast, after it has been rebranded and relaunched with 22-year-old influencers Saffron Barker and Anastasia Kingsnorth as replacement hosts. Continue reading...

Chinese-based team at parent company ByteDance alleged by Forbes to have planned to collect location informationTikTok has denied it is used to “target” US citizens following a report that its Chinese parent planned to track the location of people via the video-sharing app.A report by Forbes on Thursday claimed that, in at least two cases, a China-based team at ByteDance, the platform’s owner, planned to collect TikTok data about the location of a US citizen. Continue reading...

Martha is fed up with at her mate’s flakiness. Niamh says living five time zones away makes communication difficult. You make the call on who’s in the right

The news comes at a difficult time for the company, which had announced hiring freezes and has seen low employee moraleElon Musk told prospective investors that he plans to eliminate nearly 75% of Twitter’s staff as part of his deal to take over the social media company, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.Job cuts are expected in the coming months no matter who owns the company, according to the report, which cited interviews and documents. Continue reading...

In the second part of our Electric dreams series looking at the UK’s automotive battery industry, we visit an area whose industrial past is being revitalised

Litigants say millions of online consumers have paid too much and been denied choiceA £900m class action claim against Amazon accuses the company of pushing customers towards “offers” that benefit the online retailer, but are not good deals for users.The complaint, which is to be filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal, focuses on the company’s “Buy Box” feature, which artificially promotes certain items above the rest in response to user searches. Continue reading...

PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X

101, 102, 103, 104 … It wasn’t fast, but it was breathtakingly revolutionary, and Ceefax still has its share of devotees, 10 years after it was turned off. They explain how they are keeping the newsfeed aliveIt is 10 years since Ceefax ceased to be, at 23:32:19 BST on 23 October 2012, when the last analogue TV signal was switched off in Northern Ireland. It seems longer ago than that – probably because most of us had stopped using it years earlier. With its pixelated graphics and agonisingly slow rolling screens, it had long since been usurped by new media.But if Ceefax was a relic by the end, it’s easy to forget that its birth was an information revolution, and a breathtaking technological accomplishment. It was a precursor to the world wide web, only without the porn and arguments. In his eulogy to the service, Guardian columnist Barney Ronay pithily referred to it as “the horse-drawn internet”. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: We Were Three, from the makers of Serial, delves into a story of strained family relationships brought to a head by the pandemic – and vaccine misinformation

Small smartwatch gets much right but comes up short versus cheaper rivals and cannot be repairedGoogle’s first Pixel smartwatch is finally here after years of waiting, integrating the company’s Fitbit health-tracking tech and hoping to take on Samsung and the dominant Apple Watch.The Pixel Watch costs £339 ($350/A$549) and, while designed as a companion for the company’s smartphones, it will work with most Android phones with access to the Google Play Store but not with Apple’s iPhone. It runs Google’s Wear OS software based on Android but is heavily integrated with Fitbit – the fitness tracker firm Google bought in 2019 – potentially making it the best of both worlds. Continue reading...

The legendary psychological horror franchise will return with three video games, a movie and an interactive streaming seriesAfter 10 years in exile, fans of gruelling psychological horror can finally pack their bags: Silent Hill is reopening to visitors. During a YouTube presentation on Wednesday evening, Konami announced a reboot of the acclaimed sequel Silent Hill 2 and two new adventures, Silent Hill Townfall and Silent Hill F. A new movie tie-in, Return to Silent Hill, and an interactive live stream series, Silent Hill Ascension, were also teased.The remake is being developed by the Polish studio Bloober Team, known for horror titles such as Blair Witch and The Medium. Also involved are key members of the original Silent Hill development team, including the composer Akira Yamaoka and concept artist Masahiro Ito, best known for his creation of Silent Hill’s most infamous monster, Pyramid Head. Continue reading...

The online delivery service can now supply legal marijuana from several dispensaries in Toronto – as well as pizza for the munchiesPass notes: Uber Eats.Age: Launched by ride service Uber in 2014. Continue reading...

You can use the internet to buy uranium on the dark web or laugh at this list, which includes Aunty Donna, a bad Drake cake and a sketch so funny that Dave thought he might die

The artist now known as Ye wants to buy the ‘free-speech’ social network Parler after being banned from major sites. But hopes for a rightwing splinternet, where anything goes, is not so easy

Mia Landsem, whose ex spread an intimate photo of her online, now spends hours each day helping others get images removed“Faces of exes,” Mia Landsem read out loud, as she clicked on a link to a forum exposing intimate images of ex-girlfriends, her frowning brow illuminated by a three-screen computer. On the 25-year-old’s neck, underneath wisps of blond hair, are tattooed reminders in Norwegian to be “brave” and “don’t give a fuck.” An internet security expert by day, by night she has made it her mission to hunt down and report such images from her apartment in Oslo. “I try to focus on the worst ones,” she said. “I can maybe get a few groups removed in a day, but then 20 more appear.”Digital image-based sexual abuse – a catch-all phrase that includes deepfake pornography, so-called “upskirting” and “revenge porn”, a term rejected by activists for implying the victim has done something wrong – is a global problem on the rise. Almost three out of four victims are women, according to a 2019 study by the University of Exeter. But there are male victims and female perpetrators. Continue reading...

Washington’s ban on hi-tech exports to China marks a huge gambit for economic supremacy for the next decadesThe US has taken unprecedented steps to limit the sale of advanced computer chips to China, escalating efforts to contain Beijing’s tech and military ambitions.The moves are designed to cut off supplies of critical technology to China that may be used across sectors including advanced computing and weapons manufacture. Continue reading...