Technology | The Guardian

Workers making $17 an hour not impressed by holiday offer from company that just tripled profits to $9.9bnAmazon is asking workers experiencing hardship to write a letter to its company mascot, Peccy, this holiday season so some of their holiday wishes can come true".A flyer from the Amazon warehouse SWF1 in Rock Tavern, New York, states: Are you or someone you know facing financial hardship this holiday season? Peccy wants to help! Write a letter to Peccy. If the Peccy team selects you, some of your holiday wishes could come true!" Continue reading...

Put away that outdated edition of Trivial Pursuit and get your pads and pens at the ready ... these are the best recent word games, drawing games, bluffing games and others, to get the whole family involvedIt is a terrifying statistical fact that if you have a roomful of friends and relatives gathered at Christmas, you are only ever 20 minutes away from someone suggesting Trivial Pursuit. Don't become a victim this year - have an alternative ready. Here are my 12 board games of Christmas, some of which I've played, the rest suggested by trustworthy pals on X. They're all suitable for at least six players and there are no overly complicated rules to learn, making them perfect for slightly boozy Christmas afternoons.If your favourite isn't included, please do suggest alternatives in the comments. Continue reading...

Presenters walk the aisles of supermarkets and small shops offering what they can findThere are times when other customers browsing the malls in Gifu city, Japan, seem to wonder why Kenneth Gongon Watanabe is buying so many items, and why he is talking so energetically on his phone.But the goods in his trolleys - which can range from hoards of shoes and anime socks, to stacks of Japanese sweets and matcha latte powders - are not for him. They're actually being bought by dozens of customers in Watanabe's home country, the Philippines, who follow live on Facebook as he browses the shops. Continue reading...

The jury in the video game developer's antitrust case over Google's app store monopoly were under no illusionsThe big news last week was that a jury in San Francisco had found Google guilty on all counts of antitrust violations stemming from its dispute with Epic Games, maker of the bestselling Fortnite, which had lodged a number of complaints related to how Google runs its Play store, an Android app market with a revenue of about $48bn (38bn) a year.Why is this interesting? Isn't it just another case of two tech companies squabbling in a US court? Well, in the first place, something very rare happened - a tech giant actually lost a big case in a US court. Second, the case was decided by a jury, not (as often happens in such cases) by a judge. Third, it showed that venerable antitrust (ie anti-monopoly) laws such as the Sherman Act still work. Continue reading...

The Fortnite maker filed antitrust suits against both tech companies - while one emerged victorious, the other was found at fault on 11 claimsLate on Monday afternoon, nine jurors huddled together in a San Francisco federal court tasked with deciding the fate of Epic Games' antitrust lawsuit against Google. They emerged with a bomb likely to keep the tech world's ears ringing for years to come. After just three hours of deliberation, the jury shocked observers and legal experts by siding with the Fortnite maker, which had accused the tech giant of maintaining an illegal monopoly in the Android app market. Jurors found Google at fault for all 11 antitrust claims brought by Epic.The verdict surprised many observers because Epic had lost a very similar battle with Apple two years ago. The gaming company alleged the iPhone maker also operated an illegal monopoly via the App Store; a judge ruled against Epic in September 2021. Both cases highlighted app developers' longstanding resentment of Google and Apple's in-app purchasing fees, which can top out at 30%. Epic had tried to implement a payment system within Fortnite in 2020 that would have bypassed Google and Apple. Both companies briefly banned Fortnite from their app stores in response. Then Epic sued. Continue reading...

The photographer enjoys the sadness in this shot of her son lost in thought against the backdrop of the Golden Gate BridgeOn a family holiday with her son to San Francisco Bay in 2019, Lisa Carney was practising taking photographs in extreme lighting conditions. It's pretty amazing the tonal range you can get with smartphone cameras," she says. Here she was using an iPhone 10. I was experimenting with exposure for highlights," she explains, while still being able to bring out lots of detail in shadows."Carney shoots only on smartphones, usually editing with the Lightroom app, and says that she finds no need to use large sensor cameras. I enlarge many of my images to poster size and I'm still able to get the quality I need. I like to say, It's the wizard, not the wand.'" Continue reading...

This niche, lovingly crafted piece of hardware brings back vibrant and exciting details and memories of a much-missed consoleA few years ago I bought a Japanese copy of Snatcher, a cyberpunk video game designed by Hideo Kojima before he went on to create the legendary Metal Gear Solid series. There were just two problems with this purchase: the game is a text-heavy role-playing adventure with no English translation, and I don't own a PC Engine, a cult 16 bit machine first released in Japan in 1987, which hosted some of the finest arcade conversions of the era in then-astounding visual quality. A small number were imported into the UK, but it was never a huge hit here, so getting one on eBay is a costly and risk-laden adventure. None of this put me off. I bought Snatcher because I loved its anime aesthetic and its role in the nascent career of a games industry legend. Last week, I loaded it up for the first ever time, thanks to the Analogue Duo.Committed retro gaming fiends will be familiar with Analogue, a small, specialist maker of incredibly precise nostalgic gaming technology. It is known for building versions of the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive that don't run software emulations of old games, which can introduce lag, and will sometimes refuse to load certain titles. Instead, they're constructed around programmable circuit boards known as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), which accurately simulate the original hardware so they will load and play actual SNES and Mega Drive carts as God intended. Continue reading...

From mobile phone cases to grips to refurbished headphones, there are plenty of optionsIf you are looking for last-minute Christmas gifts and don't know what to buy, gadgets and accessories mean you don't need to know someone's clothes size or availability for a night at the theatre.There's no need to buy the latest shiny new phone or smartwatch - there are some smaller things that will be welcome presents and help extend the life of your loved ones' existing electronics. Continue reading...

Elizabeth Warren sends terse letter to Mark Zuckerberg, citing human rights organizations and Wall Street Journal reportThe US senator Elizabeth Warren issued a letter on Thursday to Mark Zuckerberg demanding information relating to allegations of suppression of pro-Palestine content on Meta platforms.Warren cited a statement co-signed by more than 90 human rights and civil rights organizations and listed various media reports and concerns about Meta's censorship, removal and mistranslation of Palestine-related content since Hamas attacks on Israel escalated conflict there in October. Continue reading...

The tech giant's app, which launched in July 2023, first needed approval from the European Commission over privacy provisionsThreads launched in the European Union on Thursday, further expanding the Meta-owned platform's user base and dealing another blow to competitor Twitter/X.Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced the launch in a post on Threads. Continue reading...

Reports suggest a ban is among potential options to protect young people from online harmRishi Sunak is considering limiting social media access for teenagers under the age of 16 to try to protect them from online harm, with reports suggesting a potential ban is on the cards.The government is considering further action despite bringing in the Online Safety Act, which requires social media platforms to shield children from harmful content or face fines of up to 10% of a company's global revenue. Continue reading...

Tax filings show Musk's charity The Foundation seeks to establish primary and secondary Stem school in AustinElon Musk has plans to open a new university in Texas, according to tax filings.Bloomberg reported the filings show Musk donated $100m to his charity, The Foundation, to establish a primary and secondary Stem school in Austin - and later to seek accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges for launching a university. Continue reading...

The retro-futuristic' mid-2000s look harks back to a time of technological optimismWhat do tropical fish, bubbles, green fields and dewdrops have in common? They are all visual markers of a mid-2000s aesthetic that is taking the TikTok generation by storm, amid a wave of nostalgia for a time when technology was seen as a path to a brighter future.Dubbed Frutiger Aero by design gurus, the trend is named after the Swiss typesetter Adrian Frutiger whose lettering featured widely in early colour computers, and Windows Aero, a visual style embraced by Microsoft's 2006 Vista software, with its screensavers depicting electric-green grass and impossibly blue skies. Continue reading...

New folder is thinner, lighter and cheaper, with almost invisible crease, challenging Samsung and GoogleOnePlus's first foldable phone is the Open, which aims to give Samsung and Google a run for their money with a slightly different form for the tablet-phone hybrid that may just be the best shape yet.The Open costs 1,599 (1,849/$1,699.99), which makes it twice the price of the brand's regular smartphones but undercuts the Samsung and Google folders by 150. It still puts the OnePlus in the ultra-premium gadget world, although closer to the price of top standard models. Continue reading...

OpenAI to pay German media group Axel Springer to use its material, including stories behind paywallsAxel Springer, the publisher of Business Insider and Politico, said on Wednesday it was partnering with OpenAI, which will pay the German media group to allow ChatGPT to summarize current articles in responses generated by the chatbot.ChatGPT users around the world will receive summaries of selected global news content from Axel Springer's media brands," which also includes the German tabloid Bild, the two companies said in a statement. Continue reading...

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it has begun process to force adoption of technology, as long as it worksUS auto-safety regulators announced Tuesday that they had begun the process that would eventually force carmakers to adopt new technology to prevent intoxicated drivers from starting vehicles.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking" to start gathering information and public comments on how to develop, legally require and deploy technology to prevent impaired people from firing up their vehicles. Continue reading...

Wouldn't it be great to have an LED sign in the back window of your car to send messages to other drivers and put an end to waving and gesturing? Well, such a device existsI know what I want for Christmas - an LED sign for the back window of my car. I've only just realised these things are readily available. I assumed otherwise because in all my years of motoring I've only ever seen one in operation. It was about six years ago on the A55 heading south towards Wrexham. I was riding my motorbike. It was a beautiful moment. A black Range Rover ahead of me was indicating a wish to move into my lane. I slowed down a little and nodded my helmet to signal my assent. And blow me down if an LED sign in the back window didn't flash up a cheery THANK YOU. So sweet. But then I felt a bit rotten because I had no way of returning this friendly fire when I overtook him. It felt impolite not to say NOT AT ALL! But it's difficult to physically communicate that, especially on a motorbike. With a random head movement and a slightly raised thumb, I did the best I could. All in all, it really was a most satisfactory exchange.You get a lot of thinking time when you're riding a motorbike, so I came to wondering what he might have flashed up if I hadn't allowed him to pull in front of me. If he'd been disappointed enough to chase me down and get past me, what might have been his message? I thought of THANKS FOR NOTHING, or perhaps a simple FUCK YOU.Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist Continue reading...

The annual list of Alexa's most-asked questions reveals evidence the UK is a nation of masochists, obsessed with football - and fartingName: Alexa.Age: Born 6 November 2014. Continue reading...

Exclusive: the New Zealand regulator has warned the schemes could be a scam' but they have escaped such scrutiny in Australia and thousands have lost money

In this week's newsletter: While the gaming Oscars' are more like a three-hour long ad show these days, here's the best of what was announced Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereThe gaming year used to follow a predictable rhythm: we'd have a flurry of announcements in the summer, around the gaming trade event E3, then a rush of releases between September and the end of November - and then absolutely nothing would happen until March at the earliest. But now E3 is gone for good, and the Game Awards - the industry's most glamorous and also most intensely commercial awards show - takes place in early December, so we suddenly have an eye-watering number of new trailers and debuts right as we're all preparing to hibernate.I didn't watch this year's show live (it started at 12.30am UK time last Saturday morning and was over three hours long) and I'm betting that most of you didn't watch it either, so here are the headlines: Baldur's Gate 3 won nearly everything; as ever the awards felt like something that had to be squeezed in around all the trailers; there was not very much time given to developers to speak, which rankled; The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Spider-Man 2 were snubbed in several categories (Zelda won best action adventure game, Spider-Man won nothing). Continue reading...

PC; Frozen District, PlayWay

Recall comes after safety regulator says advanced driver-assistance system open to foreseeable misuse'Tesla is recalling just over 2m vehicles in the United States fitted with its Autopilot advanced driver-assistance system to install new safeguards, after a safety regulator said the system was open to foreseeable misuse".The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been investigating the electric automaker led by the billionaire Elon Musk for more than two years over whether Tesla vehicles adequately ensure that drivers pay attention when using the driver assistance system. Continue reading...

The musician and comedian (AKA Candy Moore) tells us what's calming his existential dread lately - including a classic Vine, a classic TikTok and two covers of stone-cold classics

Many items sold through online marketplaces don't meet safety regulations. Then there are the counterfeits. Why is the law so powerless - and how can you protect yourself?In a bedroom in Highgate, north London, a delivery courier plugged his ebike into a mains socket to charge it. The lithium battery began to overheat and burst into flames, setting fire to surrounding furniture. The man tried desperately to put out the fire and sustained serious burns before the firefighters arrived. The London fire brigade concluded that the blaze was caused by a charging lead bought online a few days before.Lithium battery fires are occurring in the UK at a rate of at least six a week, often as a result of faulty batteries and chargers bought online. Self-employed delivery couriers, for example, may look to speed up their delivery times by using cheap parts to convert their pedal cycles into ebikes. They unwittingly buy unsafe goods from third-party sellers on online platforms such as Amazon Marketplace, eBay, Facebook Marketplace and AliExpress. But if just one cell inside a battery overheats, the high temperature can spread uncontrollably to others, causing rapid and devastating fires. These accidents happen due to a loophole in the law. According to Ian Mearns, the Labour MP for Gateshead, mainland Britain risks becoming almost a wild west, with unsafe products being peddled to unwitting consumers". The main area of concern is electrical goods. Continue reading...

Parliamentary committee says Britain is vulnerable because of poor planning and lack of investmentThe UK government is at high risk of a catastrophic ransomware attack" that could bring the country to a standstill" because of poor planning and a lack of investment, a parliamentary committee has warned.In a damning report, the joint committee on the national security strategy warned that the UK could face a crippling cyber-attack on its critical national infrastructure (CNI) at any moment. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) describes the CNI as national assets that are essential for the functioning of society, including energy supply, water supply, transportation, health and telecommunications. Continue reading...

Covid dealt the fatal blow to E3, known as video game Christmas', where gaming companies launched their splashiest titlesThe Electronic Entertainment Expo, once the largest and most prestigious trade show in video games, has been permanently cancelled.On Tuesday, the convention's website had gone nearly entirely blank but for a statement reading, After more than two decades of E3, each one bigger than the last, the time has come to say goodbye. Thanks for the memories." Continue reading...

As a bouncer, you might not think that trying to outwit guards would be relaxing for me - but stealth games do make me think about my job a little differentlyI've worked as a guard and bouncer for nearly 20 years, first putting on the black uniform not long after 1998's Tenchu: Stealth Assassins snuck on to the original PlayStation. Like that game, my job can involve hours of watching stuff and moving alone through darkened spaces, interspersed with moments of frantically trying not to get killed (thankfully, not by a Sengoku-era arrow - though I did once have a bloke throw a temporary bus stop sign through the window of a building I was guarding).I've always been intrigued by how the intruders I chase off in my job compare to the infiltrators we love to play in stealth games, all of whom seem able to slip past guards without a hitch. If they're discovered and a scuffle breaks out, those guards will fight to the death. That puts my own tenacity to shame, especially if they're on the same 12.03 an hour that I get. Maybe they studied a different emergency procedures module to the one I remember, which reminds you that a living witness is more useful than a dead hero. Continue reading...

The Facebook and Instagram owner is miles ahead of the competition, say regulators, who suggest that could change when it rolls out default end-to-end encryption for Messenger Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereThere was a rare utterance from an internet regulator last month: praise for Facebook and Instagram's parent company, Meta.Australia's e-safety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, described Meta as one of the better detection performers" for reporting child sexual abuse material on its services, making around 27m reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) last year. Apple, for comparison, reported just 234. Continue reading...

Ross Levinsohn sacking was to improve the operational efficiency and revenue of the company', says board, two weeks after fake authors exposedThe Arena Group, publisher of Sports Illustrated, has fired the magazine's CEO not long after it was revealed Sports Illustrated had published articles written by fake authors with AI-generated headshots and biographies.The Arena Group's board announced on Monday that CEO Ross Levinsohn had his employment terminated, with Manoj Bhargava named as interim chief executive. The board said it followed a meeting on actions to improve the operational efficiency and revenue of the company". Continue reading...

Google says it will appeal lawsuit accusing it of moving to quash competitors and charging unfair feesEpic Games, maker of Fortnite, has prevailed in an antitrust trial over Alphabet's Google Play app marketplace, Epic's chief executive said on Monday, hours after the federal jury took up the case.Victory over Google! After 4 weeks of detailed court testimony, the California jury found against the Google Play monopoly on all counts. The Court's work on remedies will start in January," Tim Sweeney wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. Continue reading...

Ageing acts that can't even get radio time are going viral - and finding themselves playing arenas or even soundtracking Ukrainian resistance. But how do you follow up a hit no one can explain?Like most musicians, Ryan Guldemond of the Canadian indie band Mother Mother had an extremely quiet 2020. Towards the end of the year, however, the frontman noticed that songs from the band's 2008 album O My Heart were suddenly spiking on streaming platforms. Day after day, the numbers continued to rise. Something strange was happening. We were able to track it to TikTok and it was like, Well, what's TikTok?'" Guldemond recalls. There was this whole alternate universe of people enjoying Mother Mother songs written long ago."In 2008, Guldemond says, Mother Mother couldn't get a song on the radio or build a significant international following: There's a thing called the Canadian curse where you can do well in Canada but you can't break out." They grew used to operating at a modest level. Now, thanks to TikTok, they have 8 million monthly listeners on Spotify - almost double that of their more lauded Canadian contemporaries Arcade Fire. Hayloft, an oddball tale of rural violence, has surpassed 400m streams - more than any song by, say, REM (bar Losing My Religion). In February, five years after they played to 350 people at London's 100 Club, Mother Mother will headline the 12,500-capacity Wembley Arena. Continue reading...

Researchers say better representation could elicit interest in lesser-known organisms and help conservation effortsWhen Stefano Mammola and Francesco Ficetola went to an ecology conference in Prague in 2021, they met a scientist with an unusual complaint. Jennifer Anderson, an expert in aquatic fungi, lamented that the subject of her research was not available in emoji form.If you are doing the important work of trying to save the , you can use graphics to help you communicate this in a very relatable way," said Anderson, a microbial ecologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. If you are working to save the aquatic fungi, you first must let people know that yes, aquatic fungi exist, then describe in words what they look like - usually not like mushrooms." Continue reading...

Pro-union workers are hopeful but realistic - and fear Musk's previous ruthlessness towards workers trying to unionizeElon Musk and a powerful US union may clash next year in what could be a defining moment for both the embattled tech titan and an American labor movement seeking to flex its muscles fresh off a dramatic victory over Detroit's car makers.The fight is shaping up as 2023 draws to a close - a great year for US unions and a complicated one for Musk. Continue reading...

Keeping everyone entertained during the festive season can be difficult. When tensions are high and patience and sobriety are in shorty supply communal video games could be the answerAt this time of year, we often find ourselves at festive gatherings with people of wildly varying ages and tastes. So, what's the best way to stave off boredom, avoid squabbling and keep everyone entertained over Christmas? One potential solution is a video game or, more specifically, a party video game. But is it possible to download a dancing, singing or fighting game and immediately get everyone, young and old alike, involved?To find out, I invited a bunch of friends and their kids around to my house to test five new party games. This is what we discovered ... Continue reading...

The more I navigated using my phone, the more unsettled I felt. Was it robbing something from me?In August this year I moved to Bristol. After spending most of my life living in villages or small towns, being constantly surrounded by the busyness of a city was a shock. Not owning a bike and not wanting to be reliant on Bristol's very creaky bus system, I walked everywhere. Almost automatically I used Google Maps to help me. Whereas on a traditional paper map I would first have had to locate relevant landmarks and street names before positioning myself within the map's landscape, the blue dot on my screen showed me exactly where I was. The procession of smaller blue dots stretching out to my destination revealed the fastest way to get there. I arrived at things mostly on time, and was very rarely lost.However, the more I used Google Maps, the more unsettled I felt. I often find inspiration for my writing as I walk. That can come from things I notice as I go, or from the way that walking seems to get my brain to think in a way it doesn't indoors. But this was not happening. Instead, I simply worried about not following the dotted line. Or in other words, getting lost.Ned Vessey is a freelance writer, with a particular focus on landscape and place Continue reading...

Laptop upgrade adds M3 chips, more power, longer battery life, brighter screen, lower price and darker colourApple's latest upgraded MacBook Pro adds a wider range of chip options, a cheaper price and a new black colour option, alongside even greater performance and battery life.The much-loved laptop now starts at 1,699 (1,999/$1,599/A$2,699), which isn't exactly cheap but is 450 less than its predecessor, lowering the barrier to entry significantly.Screen: 14.2in mini LED (3024x1964; 254 ppi) ProMotion (120Hz)Processor: Apple M3, Pro or MaxRAM: 8, 18 or 32, or up to 128GBStorage: 512GB, 1, 2, 4 or 8TB SSDOperating system: macOS 14.1 SonomaCamera: 1080p FaceTime HD cameraConnectivity: wifi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, 2/3x USB/Thunderbolt, HDMI 2.1, SD card, headphonesDimensions: 221.2 x 312.6 x 15.5mmWeight: 1.55 to 1.62kg Continue reading...

Young people trust social media above politicians when it comes to the Israel-Hamas war. Is it any wonder, given the kind of politics they have grown up with?In a famous two-frame meme from The Simpsons, Principal Skinner asks himself: Am I so out of touch?" No," he decides, with resolve. It's the children who are wrong." It's the easiest thing, dismissing the views of young people when they question our beliefs. It's even easier when those views are mainly expressed on a social media platform that can also be dismissed as a lawless land of misinformation and clickbaiting. And so as Palestine- and Gaza-related content explodes on TikTok, predictable responses have arrived, and some have been pretty out there.The Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley called for the banning of TikTok altogether when she said in a primary campaign debate last week that for every 30 minutes that someone watches TikTok, every day they become 17% more antisemitic, more pro-Hamas based on doing that". Last month, a Republican congressman said that TikTok was digital fentanyl", brainwashing young Americans against their country and its allies. Over at the Telegraph, we are told that the app's threat is real".Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers' questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsI've just been looking at my photos from a recent trip to the Grand Canyon and I'm thoroughly unimpressed. Why do photographs of beautiful scenery never do it justice? Alex Robinson, SuffolkSend new questions to nq@theguardian.com. Continue reading...

Rightwing conspiracy theorist was banned from platform in 2018, but could be back after 2m votes castThe social media platform X will reinstate the account of the US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones after a poll of the site's users backed his return, its owner, Elon Musk, has said.The people have spoken and so it shall be," Musk posted in reply to a poll on Saturday on whether to reinstate the Jones account. Close to 2m votes were cast by the time the poll closed, with about 70% voting in favour of Jones's return. Continue reading...

I laughed at the hapless gondola passengers, but I'm also in awe of them pursuing their vanity so publiclyI mean, I'll just come out and say it: it's pretty tempting to laugh out loud at the tourists who fell off their gondola into the canal in Venice last week because they just wouldn't stop taking selfies. Their gondolier had apparently asked them to sit down and quit all that dangerous posing, but they didn't listen and toppled right in, overturning the boat and throwing him into the tentacles of the lagoon, too. The poor man then had to try to get his very upset customers out of the big sink - there's a video of this online - and, well, let's just say he's a nobler man than I am, still trying to help them by this soaking point.So it's tempting indeed to laugh but, oh, I can't, because my secret hobby is taking ridiculous selfies, too. Only I do it when nobody is looking, so they can't judge me. Don't you? Don't you find a nice moment of sexy lighting in, er, a public lavatory, or a restaurant loo, or a lift, or a shop, or in the park with the dog, or in your friend's kitchen when she has left the room - I mean, I could go on. The reason I take so many is because none of them ever turn out the way I think they will, or because someone else has had the audacity to get into the lift and ruin my private moment with my phone. Continue reading...

Critics say Fraser Samson hiring is outrageous conflict of interest' as monitoring technology is rolled out in UK high streetsThe recently-departed watchdog in charge of monitoring facial recognition technology has joined the private firm he controversially approved, paving the way for the mass roll-out of biometric surveillance cameras in high streets across the country.In a move critics have dubbed an outrageous conflict of interest", Professor Fraser Sampson, former biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner, has joined Facewatch as a non-executive director. Continue reading...

The Filipino photographer on presenting the struggles faced by the people in his communityPhilip Am Guay's family home in Manjuyod in the Philippines is just a few metres from the beach where, one day in 2017, he found fisher Manong Ebrin checking his bunsod (fish corral) for a catch.Manong is a Filipino term, how we address an older man or a brother," Guay explains. I was an operations supervisor at a shopping mall in Cebu City during that time, staying in a boarding house. I would only go home to see my parents about five times a year, and the journey would take eight hours. When I did go, I would head straight to the beach." Continue reading...

Agreement between European Parliament and member states will govern artificial intelligence, social media and search enginesThe world's first comprehensive laws to regulate artificial intelligence have been agreed in a landmark deal after a marathon 37-hour negotiation between the European Parliament and EU member states.The agreement was described as historic" by Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner responsible for a suite of laws in Europe that will also govern social media and search engines, covering giants such as X, TikTok and Google. Continue reading...

Meta submitted nearly 95% of 29m reports of child sexual abuse material in 2022 and encryption will make it harder to detectMeta's decision to introduce end-to-end encryption for Facebook messages will hamstring the rescue of child sex trafficking victims and the prosecution of predators, according to child safety organizations and US prosecutors.This week, the tech giant announced it had begun rolling out automatic encryption for direct messages on its Facebook and Messenger platforms to more than 1 billion users. Under the changes, Meta will no longer have access to the contents of the messages that users send or receive unless one participant reports a message to the company. As a result, messages will not be subject to content moderation unless reported, which social media companies undertake to detect and report abusive and criminal activity. Encryption hides the contents of a message from anyone but the sender and the intended recipient by converting text and images into unreadable cyphers that are unscrambled on receipt. Continue reading...

Failures in the regulation of social media companies a generation ago must not be repeated

This open-world survival sim might be Minecraft lite, but it's luscious and relaxing, with a nostalgic, surprisingly emotional charmWhoever had the idea to combine three titans of the modern mass entertainment universe - Lego, Fortnite and Minecraft - into one experience is surely feeling rather smug right now. Launched on Thursday, Lego Fortnite is a new mode available within Fortnite, but it's essentially a whole new game - an open-world crafting survival sim in the unmistakable style of, yes, Minecraft. Players enter a procedurally generated world, unique to them, which somehow combines the aesthetic features of Lego and Fortnite, with its luscious, bright colours and toy-like charm.Like Minecraft, the main draw is the survival mode, where you can explore the wilderness, build houses, grow crops, tend to animals and combat a range of beasties. You start with a very limited set of building instructions and can only make a simple hut, but as you progress, gathering resources such as wood, granite and wool, you get access to more building materials. Continue reading...

In 1993, a team of five coders released what would become one of the most influential video games ever made. Three decades on, they explain how they did itIn late August 1993, a young programmer named Dave Taylor walked into an office block on the Lyndon B Johnson freeway in Mesquite, Texas, to start a new job. The building had a jet black glass exterior and sat utterly incongruent amid acres of car parks, single-storey industrial units and strip malls. Game designer Sandy Petersen called it the Devil's Rubik's Cube. Taylor's new workplace was on the sixth floor in office 615. The carpets, he discovered, were stained with spilled soda, the ceiling tiles yellowed by water leaks from above. But it was here that a team of five coders, artists and designers were working on arguably the most influential action video game ever made. This was id Software. This was Doom.By the time Taylor joined the company that day, fresh from his electrical engineering degree, id had already hammered out a dozen small-scale games for the digital magazine publisher Softdisk and the shareware pioneer Apogee. Its most recent title, Wolfenstein 3D, was an edgy Nazi shooter with fast-paced action and rudimentary polygonal environments. But when Taylor met id's charismatic designer and coder John Romero, he was shown their next project, whose name was partly inspired by a line from the movie Color of Money. (Doom" is what pool hustler Tom Cruise called his cue.) The concept was simple: Aliens meets The Evil Dead. But into this new project, Romero, the brilliant coder John Carmack and the artist Adrian Carmack had thrown all their obsessions: heavy metal, Dungeons & Dragons, gore, cutting-edge programming. Continue reading...

The trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 is everywhere this week, the first game in the smash hit crime series in more than a decade. From its crude beginnings to its multiplayer mayhem, we look back at past releases - and the outrage that greeted themGTA is a series of crime-drama video games set in fictionalised cities (mostly) around the US. In each game, the player takes on the role of a criminal (or criminals) navigating the violent underworld of modern America, stealing cars and carrying out missions and heists for a range of shadowy kingpins. The later games in particular are home to vast, freely explorable cities or states and, outside of missions, players are free to do whatever they want, whether that's exploring the countryside on a bike or taking on side jobs for car thieves, drug smugglers or corrupt politicians.The original Grand Theft Auto was designed by a Dundee-based studio, DMA Design, which also produced the famed platforming series Lemmings. At the time, the game was an unloved project and publisher BMG Interactive almost canned it several times. Now it is one of the most successful franchises in existance, created by developer Rockstar's studios across the world, and led from Edinburgh by Rockstar North. Continue reading...

Price of shares in music streaming service leaped after announcement it was laying off almost a fifth of its workforceOne of Spotify's top executives cashed in more than $9m (7.2m) in shares as the value of the world's biggest music streaming service surged after it announced it was laying off almost a fifth of its workforce to cut costs.Paul Vogel, Spotify's chief financial officer, moved to sell the $9.4m worth of stock on Tuesday, a day after investors sent the company's share price soaring in response to reports that the cuts would help it sustain profitability amid slowing economic growth. Continue reading...

How can you lessen the climate impact of your clothes? Our writers spend a month selling, tailoring and mending to find outI spot-clean for a month and look no more dishevelled than usual'I feel I should begin by airing my dirty laundry: I'm a middle-aged mother of small children who doesn't do any of the laundry in our home. I know, I'm like the level of plastic particles in our waters: unprecedented. But it's my sartorially fastidious partner, Claire, who does the laundry while my duties include walking the dog, cooking, cleaning, shopping, birthing babies, wiping bums ... all of which casts a spectrum of stains across my wardrobe. So when I'm challenged to wash my clothes less - which is one of the small ways we can individually reduce the aforementioned microplastics entering the ocean - the first thing that happens is a row with my partner over the sensitive question of whether I can claim to wash less" considering the small matter of not actually doing any washing at all. Continue reading...