Technology | The Guardian

A search of James Zhong’s Georgia home uncovered 50,000 bitcoins found on a circuit board in the bottom of a popcorn tinThe United States is seeking the forfeiture of more than $1bn in bitcoin stolen from the Silk Road online marketplace, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said on Monday.In the second largest seizure in US Department of Justice history, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents obtained the 50,000 bitcoins during a November 2021 search of the defendant James Zhong’s home in Gainesville, Georgia. Continue reading...

PC, Mac; Max Inferno/Secret Mode

Super-premium Apple tablet gets power and feature upgrade, but comes at even higher costApple has added yet more power to its top tablet, fitting the new iPad Pro with the M2 chip from the latest Macs while attempting to make it work more like a laptop with new software. But all that power comes at a truly eye-watering price.The new models cost £899 ($799/A$1,399) for the 11in screen or £1,249 ($1,099/A$1,899) for the 12.9in version as reviewed here. That’s the same price as the MacBook Air laptop, and £250 more than last year’s 12.9in iPad Pro with M1 chip, due to weak currency rates against the US dollar. Continue reading...

Guardian Australia picture editor Carly Earl explains the dos and don’ts of photographing the moon. Tuesday night’s total lunar eclipse will be the last one visible from the region until 2025.

Tech company says customers will experience longer wait times as the plant in China is operating at reduced capacityApple has said it expects fewer iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone Pro Max shipments than previously anticipated as Covid-19 restrictions temporarily disrupt production at an assembly facility in Zhengzhou, China.“The facility is currently operating at significantly reduced capacity,” Apple said in a statement. “Customers will experience longer wait times to receive their new products.” Continue reading...

Platform’s new owner tells video-makers he’s planning ‘creator monetization for all forms of content’The anarchic behaviour of YouTubers draws huge online audiences and has turned stars such as MrBeast and Logan Paul into the best-paid entertainers of the internet age. Now Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, wants a piece of this lucrative action and will attempt to lure video creators on to the social media platform.In a series of messages posted on Twitter this weekend, Musk engaged with video-makers, saying he was planning “creator monetization for all forms of content”, and that his company could “beat” the 55% cut of advertising revenue that YouTube gives its top entertainers. Continue reading...

A week-long experiment by the Guardian showcased how widely each person’s experience and ‘For You’ page variedDance videos, viral pranks, adorable pets, beauty tutorials and 60-second recipes. A scroll through TikTok’s “For You” page offers a steady stream of strange and delightful content that can feel both chaotic and somehow perfectly suited to your tastes.But how exactly does TikTok’s algorithm decide what to serve up, and why do you get that eerie feeling it knows you better than you know yourself?Create a brand new account using their real identities (even if they already had one)Open their “For You” page at the same time every morningMake a note of the first 10 videos the algorithm served upRepeat for seven days Continue reading...

Analysis by hate monitoring organisation shows platform has shown reality star’s content ‘despite pledge’ to crack downTikTok is failing to crack down on accounts that post misogynistic content featuring the banned influencer Andrew Tate, despite a previous pledge to do so, according to new research.Analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) identified more than 100 accounts that frequently promote content featuring Tate, with a total of 250m video views and 5.7 million followers. Continue reading...

Stuffed ballot boxes, ‘BlueAnon’, support for Russia and ‘corporate communists’ are catnip on the rightwing platformBallot boxes being stuffed. “BlueAnon”. Men in underpants. Every Democratic candidate: a “complete weirdo psychopath”.To dive into Truth Social, Donald Trump’s Twitter-but-for-conspiracy-theorists social media platform, is to enter a world where all of the above are real topics of debate, breathlessly discussed by Trump-backing Republicans and anonymous rightwing provocateurs. Continue reading...

Volker Türk says reports of platform’s human rights team being laid off is ‘not an encouraging start’Elon Musk has been urged by the UN to make respect for human rights central to Twitter after suggestions that as many as half of its more than 7,500 staff could be sacked.In an open letter, Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said that reports of the new owner laying off the platform’s entire human rights team were “not, from my perspective, an encouraging start”. Continue reading...

Twitter Blue offers status marks formerly used to validate VIP accounts, with more features ‘coming soon’Twitter has launched a subscription service allowing users to buy blue-tick verification for a monthly fee of $7.99 (£7) in a significant change under its new owner, Elon Musk.The system was designed to help users identify authentic and influential users on the platform, including government figures, sports stars, entertainment figures, journalists, brands and organisations. Continue reading...

Former UK-based vice-president Bruce Daisley thinks Tesla boss has underestimated the complexity of his restructuring plansElon Musk “doesn’t know what he’s doing” with Twitter and is “making everyone alarmed”, a former executive has said, after major brands paused their advertising spend on the platform and the company laid off thousands of staff.

As anger builds, Dorsey says ‘I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation – I grew the company too quickly’Former Twitter chief executive officer Jack Dorsey has gone on the platform recently acquired by billionaire Elon Musk to apologize for the state of the site, which has laid off thousands of workers.On Saturday Dorsey published a series of tweets in response to the layoffs across Twitter’s workforce, which began on Friday. As many as half of the company’s 7,500 staffers could be axed since Musk acquired the company for $44bn last week. Continue reading...

Pretending that opaque, error-prone ML is part of the grand, romantic quest to find artificial intelligence is an attempt to distract us from the truthOne of the most useful texts for anyone covering the tech industry is George Orwell’s celebrated essay, Politics and the English Language. Orwell’s focus in the essay was on political use of the language to, as he put it, “make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind”. But the analysis can also be applied to the ways in which contemporary corporations bend the language to distract attention from the sordid realities of what they are up to.The tech industry has been particularly adept at this kind of linguistic engineering. “Sharing”, for example, is clicking on a link to leave a data trail that can be used to refine the profile the company maintains about you. You give your “consent” to a one-sided proposition: agree to these terms or get lost. Content is “moderated”, not censored. Advertisers “reach out” to you with unsolicited messages. Employees who are fired are “let go”. Defective products are “recalled”. And so on. Continue reading...

New owner says company is losing $4m a day as he tries to reassure advertisers over content moderationElon Musk has defended the mass layoffs at Twitter by saying axed employees received a three-month payment from the company, which is losing more than $4m a day.The company began widespread staff cuts around the world on Friday, with suggestions that as many as half of its more than 7,500 staff could lose their jobs. Continue reading...

The UK-based photographer had to act quickly to capture his mini-moggy’s perfect pose – but is it enough to make Pearly Whiskers famous?John Angerson was working late one night when the family kitten hopped on to his desk. “She was only about three or four months old; I think we got her a little bit early,” he says. “This was the first time she’d made her way into my office. As she sat in my in-tray, I reached for my phone to take a quick photo – the yawn was just good luck.”Angerson’s daughter Daisy, who was four at the time, named the tabby Pearly Whiskers. Angerson admits that she hasn’t grown into the most affectionate of cats. “She usually only appears at breakfast and tea – she’s very independent. She still wanders into the office sometimes, but usually just to nibble on my wires until I give her food,” he says. “She does like to hang out in Daisy’s bedroom, though. When I told her about this, she asked: ‘Is Pearly Whiskers going to be famous?’” Continue reading...

Internal chaos at the company – and the decimation of its staff – has created ideal conditions for falsehoods and hateful contentThe mass layoffs at Twitter that diminished several teams, including staff on the company’s safety and misinformation teams, could spell disaster during the US midterm elections next week, experts have warned.The company has laid off around 50% of its workforce, according to news reports; a figure that Musk and others have not disputed, amounting to an estimated 3,700 people. Continue reading...

Claims that the social media platform’s entire curation team was dismissed prompts fears content could become ‘more toxic’Elon Musk ended his first week as Twitter’s owner with an indelible mark by slashing, by some estimates, up to half of the company’s workforce with little notice and abruptly cutting off employees’ access to their computers and work systems.Many employees spent the day tweeting their goodbyes, as Musk revealed brands had begun pulling their advertisements, leading to what he said was a “massive drop in revenue”. He tweeted late Friday the cuts were needed as “unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day”. Continue reading...

With advertisers cutting ties and pressure to pay back loans worth $13bn, the new direction for revenue has come under questioningLayoffs of hundreds of Twitter employees have raised alarm about the future of the platform as it continues to restructure under the ownership of Elon Musk, who purchased the company for $44bn last week.Musk, upon taking the helm of Twitter has made sweeping changes to the company, on Friday beginning mass layoffs across a number of sections – including marketing, product, engineering, legal and trust and safety. Continue reading...

In part three of our series on the UK’s battery ambitions, we look at its attempts to encourage ‘gigafactories’Human beings and batteries are a bad mix: water and dust can cause disastrous short circuits in the cells that power electric cars, risking blazing fires. So the few people allowed into the vast clean rooms at Envision AESC’s factory in Sunderland must don a full body suit and go through an air shower first. Even the Guardian’s notebook is switched for paper that does not shed fibres.Once inside, robots rule the lines. They cut rolls of electrode materials to size, layer them on top of each other and weld them to an accuracy not possible with human hands, before they are injected with electrolyte that will enable lithium ions to move one way and electrons another, powering motors of the Nissan cars made next door. Continue reading...

New owner plans widespread overhaul but he’ll need to work hard to keep advertisers onside

From lapsed millennials ageing reluctantly into their 30s to families and new players, a guide to which of the many Pokémon games might be your vibeWhen Pokémon first arrived on the scene, on cheerful coloured Game Boy cartridges inside unassuming cardboard boxes, few would have predicted that 25+ years later, there would be more than 50 games featuring these collectible pocket monsters. They’ve become a bit of a pest problem, actually, growing from the original 150 critters to more than 900. Thanks to the franchise’s gargantuan success – from anime to trading cards to several films, one of which starred Ryan Reynolds as Pikachu – there’s an overwhelming number of modern Pokémon games. If choosing between them has left you grasping your head like a Psyduck, here’s a breakdown of the best. Continue reading...

Social media has made finding love easier, but ending relationships even messier. Here’s how to finish things online without losing your mindWhen I was 16, back in 2009, I got my first boyfriend. The whirlwind romance began unexpectedly after a school trip and a few too many shots of cheap vodka. (Thankfully, the relationship outlasted the hangover.)Until this point, I had watched from the sidelines as my friends’ doomed teen romances played out on MSN Messenger. Here, a sign of true love was adding a significant other’s initials to your screen name. Adding a crush to your MSN name was a Very Big Deal and when it, inevitably, fell apart, it would be dramatically replaced with a broken heart or some sad song lyrics. Continue reading...

I tested one by hitting it against a wall – the wall took the damageI was born with Poland syndrome, a disease that prevented the formation of my right arm and pectoral muscles. I was bullied at school. People said things like, “It’s not your fault that you were born like this, it’s your mother’s fault.” Or asked me to catch a ball with my right hand. Stupid comments that wouldn’t affect me now, but back then they struck very hard.I would play with Lego a lot as a child. I got my first kit when I was five. My parents realised it was a great way to improve my dexterity. I just kept going, building planes and cars. I even built a guitar. Continue reading...

Ex-employees say they were not given enough notice under US federal law over job losses

Investing in risky stocks gave me the illusion of control in a time of uncertainty – until it derailed my entire lifeI kept the news in all the way out of the terminal until halfway through the airport parking garage, which was as far as I could hold it. It was the kind of announcement that was too voluminous for the inside of a car, so I blurted it out to my parents in the open air in a half-mumble, half-laugh.“So, umm, I turned $15,000 into $1.2m in the past year.” Continue reading...

Possible access to users’ data could pose national security risk and could be used to target kingdom’s dissidentsIt has been five years since Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who has been known for decades as among one of the richest Middle East investors, received a phone call summoning him to the royal court in Riyadh.The prince – who together with his investment firm has emerged as the second-largest investor in Twitter after Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform – became a prisoner. Continue reading...

The reduction, which will be delivered by email, comes as the new Twitter CEO was speculated to cut as much as 50% of staffElon Musk will begin mass layoffs at Twitter on Friday, sharply reducing the social media platform’s workforce, the company said in an email to staff on Thursday.“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” said the email. The New York Times and Washington Post both reported on the layoffs and cited the internal email. Continue reading...

Cheerios and Lucky Charms cereal company joins General Motors Co and Audi among others in pulling money from the platformGeneral Mills is the latest to join a growing group of companies halting advertising on Twitter after the social media platform was acquired by billionaire Elon Musk for $44bn.The company, known for its Cheerios and Lucky Charms cereals, confirmed on Thursday it would pause advertising on the platform. “We will continue to monitor this new direction and evaluate our marketing spend,” said spokesperson Kelsey Roemhildt. Continue reading...

Mercedes Wedaa claims she was forced to regularly climb out of a laundry room window to go to the toiletJeff Bezos is being sued by a former housekeeper who claims she was subjected to racial discrimination and forced to regularly climb out of a laundry room window to go to the toilet as she wasn’t allowed to enter the Amazon billionaire’s house except on “cleaning assignment”.Mercedes Wedaa, who worked cleaning Bezos’s Seattle mansion for three years, claimed in a lawsuit filed in Seattle state court that she and other hispanic cleaning staff were treated differently to white staff. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: The journalist was killed in mysterious circumstances in South Sudan – who was he, and why was he there? A new show finds out. Plus: five of the best podcasts to exercise to

Reports suggest new owner Elon Musk aims to lose 3,800 roles of 7,500 staff with workers to be told as soon as Friday

In the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover of the company, rumors of job cuts swirl and employees report being left in the darkTwitter is facing fresh uncertainty amid a growing exodus of top management and reports that mass layoffs and major changes to the platform could be coming within days.The company’s advertising and marketing chiefs have recently announced their departures, as well as the chief people and diversity officer, the general manager for core technologies, the head of product and vice-president of global sales. Last week, Elon Musk fired the CEO, Parag Agrawal, the chief financial officer, Ned Segal, and the legal affairs and policy chief, Vijaya Gadde, shortly after taking over the company. Continue reading...

A follow-up to the company’s 2016 PlayStation VR is due to be released in February 2023Sony’s new PlayStation VR 2 virtual reality headset will be released on 22 February 2023, the company has announced. It will cost £529.99, more than the PlayStation 5 console needed to use it (currently £479.99).The price includes the headset itself, two motion controllers and headphones. An optional charging station costs an extra £39.99. Sony is billing it as a more premium device than the previous PlayStation VR, which was released in 2016 at £349. It features haptic feedback in the controllers, eye-tracking, higher fidelity OLED screens and 3D audio. Games bought for the older device will not be compatible with the newer one. Continue reading...

Classic songs are now remastered to compete with contemporary pop on streaming services. But what do we lose when Yellow Submarine is ‘de-mixed’ for generation playlist?Yellow Submarine, Ringo Starr’s turn on Revolver, has been a gateway for children into the music of the Beatles since its release in 1966. A new reissue of the album makes that relationship more explicit: Giles Martin, son of original producer George and the sonic custodian of the Beatles catalogue, says his “de-mixing” of the album – using AI to separate individual instruments that were originally squeezed together on four tracks – was done in part with a playlist-listening younger audience in mind.Martin recently told Variety that his teenage children listen to old and new music side by side, veering from Fleetwood Mac to Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo. “[W]hat I want to make sure is that when people hear the Beatles, that it has the same dynamic as the other stuff they’re listening to,” he said. He added that 1969’s Abbey Road, recorded on a then luxuriant eight tracks and the first Beatles album not released in mono, stands out from the band’s catalogue as “it sounds more hi-fi than the other Beatles albums”. This might be, he proposes, one reason why it performs so well on streaming services. Continue reading...

Privacy policy update confirms data of continent’s users available to range of TikTok bases including in Brazil, Israel and USTikTok is spelling out to its European users that their data can be accessed by employees outside the continent, including in China, amid political and regulatory concerns about Chinese access to user information on the platform.The Chinese-owned social video app is updating its privacy policy to confirm that staff in countries, including China, are allowed to access user data to ensure their experience of the platform is “consistent, enjoyable and safe”. Continue reading...

Foxconn plant in Zhengzhou, from which many workers have fled, now under seven-day Covid lockdownChinese authorities have announced a seven-day coronavirus lockdown in the area around the world’s largest iPhone factory, stoking concern that production will be severely curtailed ahead of the Christmas period.Foxconn’s plant in Zhengzhou, which employs about 200,000 people, produces the majority of Apple’s new phones, including the new iPhone 14. Continue reading...

A new wave of indie horror games and remakes of haunting classics such as Silent Hill are getting more creative at trying to mess with your headHalloween might be over, but the scary memories last a lifetime, at least for me. I do not like horror. I am one of the world’s biggest wusses, and feeding my imagination with nightmare fuel will keep me up at night for weeks. I was recently so disturbed by a simple bus advert for the movie Smile that I read the Wikipedia summary of the plot, and just that was enough to screw with my sleep. My partner, meanwhile, cannot get enough of disgusting films and terrifying games, so he’s delighted to be living through something of a golden age for video game horror. Not only are haunting classics such as Silent Hill and Resident Evil getting endless remakes, there’s also an ongoing new wave of indie horror games that do ever more creative things with this medium’s ability to get inside your head.These days, I actively try to avoid horrible things, but the games that freaked me out formed some of my most vivid childhood memories. Zelda: Ocarina of Time had the Gibdos, desiccated corpses that lived in graveyards and dungeons. They could freeze Link in his tracks with a shriek, then walk towards him with horrible slowness, then speed up at the last second to leap atop his shoulders and try to suffocate him. And at the bottom of a well, there was an amorphous, eyeless, white monster whose many hands protruded from the Earth, ready to grab and ensnare. I had to play the entirety of the Shadow Temple, with its bloodstains and discordant choral music, through half-closed eyes and with a guide in hand.Simon Parkin interviewed Hideo Kojima for us in Tokyo. Kojima still won’t talk about exactly what happened during his infamous split with Konami, but gaming’s most famous director did discuss plenty of other interesting stuff, including how he feels about his past work and his conflicting relationship with social media.CD Projekt Red’s original Witcher game is going to be remade. I would love to revisit this game and I’m super-interested to see whether they will preserve the collectible “sex cards” Geralt collected by sleeping with every available female character. Those were gross at the time, but the idea has aged particularly badly over the past 15 years.Ikea is throwing a fit over a horror game set in an obvious satirical stand-in for its stores, which would be quite funny if it wasn’t also forcing the developer to revamp the entire thing for fear of getting sued.This greatly entertaining feature chronicles how players have come together over the years to translate Splatoon’s various in-game languages – only to discover that the dude who runs the clothing shop wears a T-shirt on Tuesdays that says “Fuck You”.The manager of an Amsterdam hotel is dismayed that the building features in the new Call of Duty game. “We have taken note of the fact that the Conservatorium Hotel is undesirably the scene of the new Call of Duty … More generally, we don’t support games that seem to encourage the use of violence. The game in no way reflects our core values and we regret our apparent and unwanted involvement.” Continue reading...

Elon Musk says setting up process over those barred, including Donald Trump, will take ‘at least a few more weeks’Banned Twitter accounts including Donald Trump’s will not be reinstated until after the US midterm elections at least, the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, has said.The Tesla chief executive’s statement came as a study revealed that Twitter had taken down six disinformation networks on the platform linked to China and Iran that had been tweeting about the 8 November elections. Continue reading...

The platform is home to a devoted base of left-leaning communities – and no one billionaire can control itSince Elon Musk completed his purchase of Twitter last week, some of the social media app’s users have been looking for a new home – only to find there aren’t many great options. Twitter’s co-founder Jack Dorsey is beta testing a new app called Bluesky, but there’s no launch date yet.However, tech-savvy users are rallying around Mastodon, a six-year-old social media platform popular among a devoted base of left-leaning niche communities. Mastodon, named after the extinct tusked animal, is decentralized, which means it can’t be controlled by a single corporation or space billionaire. That’s clearly appealing to the flood of users who have signed up since Musk’s Twitter takeover, with more than 70,000 users joining Mastodon on the day after his announcement alone. Continue reading...

Match Group beat earning estimates for the third quarter, posting revenues of $810mTinder’s parent company, Match Group, beat revenue estimates for the last quarter as more users looking for matches took out paid subscriptions on the popular dating app.Their results were an outlier in what has been a quarter of poor performance for some of the biggest tech companies in the US. Match Group, who own a suite of dating apps including Hinge and OKCupid, saw their shares rise 16% on Tuesday. Continue reading...

The new owner justified the measure saying ‘we need to pay the bills somehow’Elon Musk has indicated that a verified account on Twitter in the future could cost $8 a month, despite facing a user backlash over proposals to charge for the feature.The new owner of Twitter described the current system for allocating blue check marks – which verify a user as a trustworthy source – as “bullshit” in a Twitter post to his more than 110 million followers on Tuesday. Continue reading...

US-based company hands over £615m to UK tax authorities after previously claiming it was exempt from VATUber is handing £615m to UK tax authorities to settle an investigation into unpaid VAT, as it reported better than expected results, sending its shares higher.The San Francisco-based ride hire and food delivery company said it achieved a UK tax settlement on Monday to resolve all outstanding VAT claims and would pay £615m to HM Revenue and Customs during the fourth quarter. Continue reading...

The world’s richest person is clearing house and causing chaos at one of the world’s top social media platforms. From verification to free speech, here’s inside Elon Musk’s first days of power

Twitter’s biggest tryhard has taken over the platform, but the social media industry could be heading for multiple crisesTwitter has been taken over by its least interesting troll for $44bn. When Elon Musk took a stake in the platform, he claimed it was to ensure the “future of civilisation” and preserve a “common digital town square”. Roughly translated, that means the world’s richest man has bought his favourite megaphone.Musk, with 112.1 million followers, is an obsessive Twitter tryhard: the attention economy’s biggest attention-seeker. From baselessly calling a British diver a “pedo”, to his baffling stunt at Twitter HQ – turning up with a kitchen sink and uttering the punchline, “let that sink in” – he clearly thinks comedy is his metier. He reminds me of Christopher Hitchens’ barb about an enemy: he “thinks he’s a wit and is half right”. Continue reading...

World’s richest person plans revamp of social media platform, asking users if he should bring back VineElon Musk is considering charging Twitter users $20 (£17.30) a month or $240 a year for a blue tick on their account, as the world’s richest person prepares an overhaul of the social media platform.The Tesla chief executive is planning changes to Twitter’s Blue subscription service, according to the tech newsletter Platformer, including raising the $4.99 a month fee to $19.99. Users verified by the platform – who carry a blue tick flagging them as an authentic source – would have 90 days to sign up to Blue or lose their check mark. Continue reading...

Reports that Musk will let go of 25% of its workforce, or nearly 2,000 employees, come as tech billionaire overhauls companyElon Musk has appointed himself CEO of Twitter and dissolved its board of directors, it was revealed in a company filing on Monday, as Twitter employees brace for extensive layoffs under a new restructuring that could target up to a quarter of staff.The Washington Post reported on Monday that Musk’s team has been discussing dismissing 25% of the company’s workforce in a first round of layoffs.Reuters contributed to this report Continue reading...

Shonda Rhimes and Sara Bareilles are among celebrities leaving the platform, but others are struggling with the decisionTwitter isn’t shaping up to be the party Elon Musk might have expected. Not long after the Tesla CEO officially gained control of the app, many users have contemplated an exodus – while others are debating the merits of staying.Some celebrities and pundits made it clear they were on their way out. Shonda Rhimes, the TV writer and showrunner, was one of the first. “Not hanging around for whatever Elon has planned. Bye,” she wrote on the site. Continue reading...

Disruption comes less than a week after multi-hour outage at WhatsApp, also owned by Instagram’s parent company, MetaInstagram is looking into the reasons behind an accidental wave of account suspensions, which have led many around the world to worry that their access to the social network has been curtailed for good.Users began reporting problems at about 1300 GMT, turning to other social networks to post baffled screenshots of the ban notifications. “We suspended your account on October 31, 2022,” the warning reads, before telling affected posters that their account “doesn’t follow our community guidelines” and that it will be permanently disabled in the event of the suspension being upheld. Continue reading...

Unverified videos shared on Chinese social media showed people who are allegedly workers at the Foxconn plant climbing over fences and carrying their belongings along a road.Workers from China's largest iPhone factory have reportedly been fleeing the factory amid fears of full-scale lockdowns in Covid-hit Zhengzhou.Foxconn, an Apple supplier headquartered in Taiwan, has about 200,000 workers at the Zhengzhou complex. It has not disclosed the number of infected workers nor the number who have left, but said on Sunday it would not stop them from departing