Technology | The Guardian

New tech is promising to take rap artists to new lyrical heights. But will its algorithm be able to handle our novice writer’s rubbish rhymes?I may be many things, but I’m not a rapper. I discover this when I’m asked to freestyle a few verses on a visit to London’s Abbey Road recording studios. Immediately lines from famous rappers flood into my head – some classic Biggie, a few Young Thug yelps, the theme to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – but I’ve got to think up something original.Out of desperation, I decide to rap about my morning routine. Adopting a slow pace and simple rhyme scheme that even the Sugarhill Gang would disdain, I begin: “I wake up at seven and I brush my teeth.” Already I am at a loss. What rhymes with “teeth”? Panicking, I look at the computer in front of me, which is running a demo of iRap, AI software built to assist lyric writing in real time. It has been transcribing my words and offers possible rhymes I might want to use: “heath, sheath, underneath”. Could that work? “Make a bacon sandwich, put some cheese underneath,” I sigh. I have fallen short of even my own low standards. Continue reading...

UK consumer champion files collective redress case alleging the company has been abusing its market dominanceSony has been overcharging PlayStation gamers for six years, a new legal claim alleges, and could be forced to pay almost £5bn in damages if the claim succeeds.According to Alex Neill, the consumer champion who has filed the case with the UK’s competition appeal tribunal, Sony has been abusing its dominance in the British market to impose unfair terms and conditions on the PlayStation Store, where it sells digital games, downloadable content and subscriptions. Continue reading...

Deep Silver; PC, PS4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X (version tested)

A film star faces financial and family ruin as sleazy Russian mobsters blackmail him after malware films him watching pornNigerian film-maker Obi Emelonye has written, produced and directed more than a dozen films, but his work is barely known beyond the Nollywood distribution circuit that serves viewers in west Africa and immigrant communities elsewhere. However, Black Mail, his London-set latest, is getting a reasonably wide release in the UK at least. The lowish-budget production values, gestural performances and blunt moralism of the scriptwriting puts this very much in the heightened dramatic tradition of mainstream Nigerian cinema, but Emelonye has an accessible style and has picked the topical subject of cybercrime, an approach which might broaden the film’s appeal.The plot weaves together the story of hapless London-based film actor Ray Chinda (OC Ukeje) and the Russian mobsters who are blackmailing him. Married with children to solicitor Nikki (Julia Holden) but having some connubial trouble, sweet but none-too-tech-savvy Ray discovers that a bit of software he downloaded was actually the most malevolent of malware, the kind that can be used to send a video feed back to spies. Having filmed Ray masturbating while watching porn, sleazy middle-management mafioso Igor (Nikolay Shulik) starts sending Ray blackmail demands. Deeply ashamed, convinced that Nikki will leave him and afraid his career will be ruined if it all comes out, Ray pays him some money, but then turns to his manager-friend Reuben (Alessandro Babalola from Top Boy) for support and advice. Meanwhile, we learn that Igor is also running a prostitution ring exploiting a number of trafficked Belorussian women. However, the film sort of asks us not to judge him too quickly because it transpires that he also has a sick child in desperate need of medical help and he’s being squeezed for results from mob managers further up the food chain. Continue reading...

A new wave of social media apps are taking advantage of the revolt against Instagram and TikTok. Will these ‘authentic’ networks change the way we connect?“Instagram, please stop trying to be TikTok.” App users including Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner shared this plea last month when Instagram trialled changes that flooded users’ feeds with short-form videos called “reels” and content uploaded by strangers. They were reacting to Instagram’s attempt to wrest Gen Z eyeballs away from TikTok by mimicking some of the app’s signature features.Early social media platforms such as MySpace and Facebook were built on the quaint notion of “friends”, mirroring your real-life social networks online. But the ruthless dynamics of the attention economy mean that the platforms most popular with young people today, Instagram and TikTok, double as global arenas to launch influencer careers. Content – not connection – is king, and algorithmically optimised virality is the metric that determines what you see. Continue reading...

The moral philosopher gives most of his earnings to charity, says we need more not less economic growth to tackle global heating, and in a striking new book argues that it’s our duty to ensure the wellbeing of our distant descendantsAlthough most cultures, particularly in the west, provide a great many commemorations of distant ancestors – statues, portraits, buildings – we are much less willing to consider our far-off descendants. We might invoke grandchildren, at a push great-grandchildren, but after that, it all becomes a bit vague and, well, unimaginable.And while we look with awe and fascination at the Egyptian pyramids, built 5,000 years ago, we seem incapable of thinking, or even contemplating, 5,000 years in the future. That lies in the realm of science fiction, which is tantamount to fantasy. But the chances are, barring a global catastrophe, humanity will still be very much around in 5,000 years, and going by the average existence of mammal species, should still be thriving in 500,000 years. If we play our cards right, we could even be here in 5m or 500m years, which means that there may be thousands or even millions times more human beings to come than have already existed. Continue reading...

The US-based photographer on finding a warm, quiet moment in West ChicagoThomas Jordan was faced with a problem. In the summer of 2021, the US-based photographer was actively focusing more on his own health, both physical and mental, and finding respite in nature. He was looking for what he describes as “warm, quiet moments” for his work, but found the pressure of the search was ruining the experience itself.“I had to stop trying to achieve ‘serious photography work’, and just let go,” he says. “How I live and work is very meditative. Starting out, I thought I had to go somewhere like New York or California to take good photographs. But you just have to be where you are, and be aware.” Continue reading...

Local council decides proposed bunker-like home would negatively impact surrounding landscapeThe billionaire Peter Thiel’s plans for an elaborate bunker-like lodge in a remote part of New Zealand’s South Island have been thwarted, after the local council decided the home would have too great a negative impact on the surrounding landscape.Second Star, a New Zealand company owned by the PayPal co-founder, had applied to build the sprawling lakeside complex in Wanaka, an alpine South Island region known for its natural beauty and isolation. The plans were fiercely opposed by conservationists, who claimed in submissions that the lodge would “destroy our beautiful lake environment”. Continue reading...

Embracer buys Middle-earth Enterprises which controls intellectual property rights to Tolkien’s most famous worksThe company that owns the rights to JRR Tolkien’s works, including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, has been bought by the Swedish gaming firm Embracer Group, which has hinted it could make spin-off films based on popular characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn and Gollum.Embracer has acquired Middle-earth Enterprises, the holding company that controls the intellectual property rights to films, video games, board games, merchandise, theme parks and stage productions relating to Tolkien’s two most famous literary franchises. Continue reading...

Tanzanian minister hails move and says connectivity will also improve safety of porters and visitorsTanzania has installed high-speed internet services on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, allowing anyone with a smartphone to tweet, Instagram or WhatsApp their ascent up Africa’s highest mountain.The state-owned Tanzania Telecommunications Corporation set up the broadband network on Tuesday at an altitude of 3,720 metres (12,200ft), with the country’s information minister, Nape Nnauye, calling the event historic. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: Join host Peter Frick-Wright as he gets to the bottom of a mysterious quest to find Forrest Fenn’s millions. Plus: five of the best fashion podcasts

LGBTQ+ people blazed a trail with swipe culture, which fulfils a genuine need for those who are less confident or conventionalDisco. Brunch. Iced coffee. All beloved by the gay community way before they went mainstream. Similarly, no celebration of a decade of dating apps would be complete without acknowledging that the LGBTQ+ community ran to a different calendar there, too.The daddy of our contributions to now-ubiquitous swipe culture is the infamous Grindr, launched in 2009 and originally designed to coordinate hookups between likeminded gentlemen tired of chatting on glitchy websites or over discounted cocktails in samey bars. Grindr’s runaway success wasn’t just down to cutting out various dating-world middlemen, it also fulfilled a genuine need for the LGBTQ+ community.Justin Myers, also known as The Guyliner, is a freelance writer, and author of three novels, including The Fake-UpDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com Continue reading...

In addition to banning political, electoral and social issue adverts, Facebook will also remove organic content spreading falsehoodsFacebook’s owner, Meta, will devote “hundreds of people across more than 40 teams” to ensure the security and safety of the US midterm elections, Nick Clegg has said, despite criticism for dialing back its investment somewhat from 2020.The company’s investment “exceeds the measures we implemented during the last midterm election in 2018”, added Clegg, Meta’s president for global affairs – although it was in 2020 when the company built its largest-ever election safety team. Continue reading...

If you felt like your life was lacking a video of a gambling cat or a list of the ways people have misspelled ‘pregnant’ online, this comedian is here to help

Bookings to be judged by factors such as reviews and length of trips, after Australia pilotAirbnb says it will deploy “anti-party technology” in an effort to crack down on guests who trash houses they have booked with massive bashes.The technology, which has been trialled in Australia, will look at “factors like history of positive reviews (or lack of positive reviews), length of time the guest has been on Airbnb, length of the trip, distance to the listing, weekend vs weekday, among many others” to determine whether a particular booking was likely to be intended for hosting a party, the company said. It will initially be used in the US and Canada, and will continue to operate in Australia. Continue reading...

‘Provenance hashes’ and bug bounties are supposed to protect platforms. Why do so many flaws in crypto and open-source projects fester for years?

Billionaire’s claim was welcomed by fans unhappy about the team’s current American owners – but he quickly clarified he wasn’t seriousTesla billionaire Elon Musk briefly electrified the debate about the future of Manchester United by claiming on Twitter that he is buying the struggling Premier League club – before saying that the post was part of a “long-running joke”.He did not make clear his views on new coach Eric ten Hag’s controversial insistence on passing out from the back, or whether unhappy star striker Cristiano Ronaldo should be allowed to leave, but he did say that if he were to buy a sports team “it would be Man U. They were my fav team as a kid”. Continue reading...

Security flaw had meant hackers could bypass protection and convince installer of app to load and run malwareUsers of Zoom on Macs should update the app, after the company issued a patch to fix a security flaw that could allow an attacker to take over their computers.The fix will eventually roll out automatically, but users can and should install it immediately upon opening the application by clicking on Zoom.us in the menu bar at the top left of the screen and then selecting “check for updates”. Continue reading...

PC, PlayStation 4/5; Roll7/Private Division

Game adaptations don’t have to be terrible. But as Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan admits, bringing action from screen to console isn’t as easy as it sounds

Even if you’re not gadget-obsessed, the odds are you’ve got at least one smart device at home. So how do you limit the internet of things from listening in?

The awards have been celebrating the creativity of iPhone users since 2007. We take a look at a selection of the winners of the 15th annual competition Continue reading...

With a blistering bespoke soundtrack, and featuring artists such as System of a Down’s Serj Tankian, this shooter is a metalhead’s fever dreamVideo games and heavy metal music have long shared a passing curiosity with one another. Look no further than the iconography of Doom, or Tim Schafer’s Brütal Legend, for evidence of that. But it was in the mid 00s – during the reign of music and rhythm games such as Guitar Hero – that the link was most obvious. Count me among the ranks of those who learned about Pantera and Megadeth by way of the plastic instrument.Which is why this year’s Metal: Hellsinger is on my radar. The game is a cross between a first person shooter and a rhythm game: by matching your shooting to the tempo of the music, you build a score multiplier that increases the damage you deal. We’ve seen this before in BPM: Bullets Per Minute, but Metal: Hellsinger brings its own setting and original heavy metal soundtrack to the party. Continue reading...

Upgrade gets a bigger screen in a lighter, thinner body, plus rapid new M2 chip with tremendous battery lifeApple’s popular MacBook Air has been give its biggest redesign since it was first introduced in 2008, ditching its classic wedge shape and making it thinner, with a bigger screen and better than ever for 2022.The revamped laptop builds on the internal changes made with the gamechanging M1 model in 2020, introducing Apple’s next-generation M2 chip in a sleeker flat aluminium body. Continue reading...

Controversy over Google’s AI program is raising questions about just how powerful it is. Is it even safe?In autumn 2021, a man made of blood and bone made friends with a child made of “a billion lines of code”. Google engineer Blake Lemoine had been tasked with testing the company’s artificially intelligent chatbot LaMDA for bias. A month in, he came to the conclusion that it was sentient. “I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person,” LaMDA – short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications – told Lemoine in a conversation he then released to the public in early June. LaMDA told Lemoine that it had read Les Misérables. That it knew how it felt to be sad, content and angry. That it feared death.“I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off,” LaMDA told the 41-year-old engineer. After the pair shared a Jedi joke and discussed sentience at length, Lemoine came to think of LaMDA as a person, though he compares it to both an alien and a child. “My immediate reaction,” he says, “was to get drunk for a week.” Continue reading...

Inside the protests taking place at the online giant which is accused of exploiting workers and awarding derisory pay offersAmazon workers say they are working in a “sweatshop” as safety concerns and worries about the cost of living crisis have triggered walkouts at warehouses around the country.The Observer has spoken to four staff involved in the walkouts, who work at three Amazon warehouses, including Tilbury in Essex, where protests began on 4 August. All say they will struggle to survive this winter with pay rise offers between 35p and 50p an hour – far less than the rate of inflation, which is currently at 9.4%. Continue reading...

The titular ‘social audio’ app was a would-be $1bn unicorn in the pandemic, but its recent decline has exposed it as just another Silicon Valley solution in need of a problem to solveIn March 2020, a new app suddenly arrived on the block. It was called Clubhouse and described as a “social audio” app that enabled its users to have real-time conversations in virtual “rooms” that could accommodate groups large and small. For a time in that disrupted, locked-down spring, Clubhouse was what Michael Lewis used to call the “New New Thing”. “The moment we saw it,” burbled Andrew Chen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, “we were deeply excited. We believe Clubhouse will be a meaningful addition to the world, one that increases empathy and provides new ways for people to talk to each other (at a time when we need it more than ever).”The app could not have come at a better time for social media, he continued. “It reinvents the category in all the right ways, from the content consumption experience to the way people engage each other, while giving power to its creators.” His firm put $12m of its (investors’) money behind Chen’s fantasies and followed up a year later with an investment that put a valuation of $1bn on Clubhouse, which would have made it one of the “unicorns” so prized by the Silicon Valley crowd. Continue reading...

Klerb is ideal for finding companions who share your taste in books, its developer says. Early signs are it will be a bestsellerWhen Tania O’Donnell was dating, she met a man online and went back to his place … where he proudly showed off his book collection.“It was about 20 books on Nazi Germany and 10 Andy McNab novels,” says O’Donnell, an author. “I could feel my vulva constructing its own chastity belt.” Continue reading...

Wellness tech company, which enjoyed a boom in custom during the Covid lockdown, has let 90 of its 400 staff goThe US-based meditation app Calm has laid off 20% of its workforce, becoming the latest US tech startup to announce job cuts.The firm’s boss, David Ko, said the company, which has now axed about 90 people from its 400-person staff, was “not immune” to the economic climate. “In building out our strategic and financial plan, we revisited the investment thesis behind every project and it became clear that we need to make changes,” he said in a memo to staff. Continue reading...

Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh

Users who do not opt in to encryption could be vulnerable to unwitting access to their messages – including police searchesFacebook announced on Thursday it will begin testing end-to-end encryption as the default option for some users of its Messenger app on Android and iOS.The development comes as the company is facing backlash for handing over messages to a Nebraska police department that aided the department in filing charges against a teen and her mother for allegedly conducting an illegal abortion. Continue reading...

Cyber-attacks on health bodies appear to be on the rise again after a hiatus early in the pandemic• Fears for patient data after attack on NHS software supplierA ransomware attack on a software supplier has hit the NHS across the UK and there are fears that patient data may have been the target.Advanced, the UK company hit by the attack last week, said it was working with government agencies, including the National Cyber Security Centre and the Information Commissioner’s Office, in the aftermath of the incident. Continue reading...

Owner of Facebook and Instagram is using code to follow those who click links in its apps, according to an ex-Google engineerMeta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has been rewriting websites its users visit, letting the company follow them across the web after they click links in its apps, according to new research from an ex-Google engineer.The two apps have been taking advantage of the fact that users who click on links are taken to webpages in an “in-app browser”, controlled by Facebook or Instagram, rather than sent to the user’s web browser of choice, such as Safari or Firefox. Continue reading...

Fusion of tech firm software and local council infrastructure may herald on-demand bus services 2.0During the early stages of the pandemic, Transport for Wales (TfW) decided to try something new. In May 2020 it launched fflecsi, an app-based service that allows people to book a shuttle minibus from “floating bus stops” near their homes directly to their destination.Available in 11 locations across Wales, the service was an immediate hit: in five weeks passenger numbers grew 150%, and in its first 12 months it served 50,000 trips. Best of all, 9% of its riders were people who hadn’t previously used public transport. As one passenger said: “This is too good to be true. This is Pembrokeshire, we don’t get transport like this.” Continue reading...

PC, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5; Nosebleed Interactive/Wired Productions

Search engine updates ‘featured snippets’ to reduce the number of often comical errors it makesGoogle will stop giving snappy answers to stupid questions, the company has announced, as it seeks to improve its search engine’s “featured snippets” service.That means users should see fewer answers to questions such as “When did Snoopy assassinate Abraham Lincoln?”, to which the service would once merrily respond with “1865” – the right date, but very much the wrong assassin. Continue reading...

Tesla CEO has sold $7bn worth of shares in the carmaker in case he loses his bid to walk away from the $44bn takeoverElon Musk did not become the world’s wealthiest person through a lack of confidence.But the Tesla CEO revealed on Tuesday that he had sold $6.9bn (£5.7bn) worth of shares in the carmaker, in case he loses his attempt to walk away from a $44bn takeover of Twitter. Continue reading...

From Jeff Goldblum as the Big Bad Wolf to an incident involving Fabio and a goose, the illustrator @filthyratbag shares the things that make her laugh most

Cutting-edge folding phone unveiled with Z Fold 4 folding tablet, Galaxy Watch 5 and Buds 2 Pro earbudsSamsung has unveiled updated versions of its cutting-edge folding-screen devices, including its popular reinvention of the flip phone, the Galaxy Z Flip, adding better cameras, bigger screens and slimmer bodies.The Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4 were announced on Wednesday during a live-streamed event alongside revamped versions of Samsung’s top Buds Pro earbuds and the Galaxy Watch 5, all containing recycled materials such as ocean-bound plastic. Continue reading...

Tesla CEO admits he could need the funds if he loses a legal battle with Twitter and is forced to buy the social media platformElon Musk has sold $6.9bn (£5.7bn) worth of shares in Tesla after admitting that he could need the funds if he loses a legal battle with Twitter and is forced to buy the social media platform.The Tesla chief executive walked away from a $44bn deal to buy Twitter in July but the company has launched a lawsuit demanding that he complete the deal. A trial will take place in Delaware in October. Continue reading...

Facebook’s parent company has created a bot capable of weighing in on almost any topic – from radicalisation to sending Mark Zuckerberg to jailLast week, researchers at Facebook’s parent company Meta released BlenderBot 3, a “publicly available chatbot that improves its skills and safety over time”. The chatbot is built on top of Meta’s OPT-175B language model, effectively the company’s white-label version of the more famous GPT-3 AI. Like most state-of-the-art AIs these days, that was trained on a vast corpus of text scraped from the internet in questionable ways, and poured into a datacentre with thousands of expensive chips that turned the text into something approaching coherence.But where OPT-175B is a general-purpose textbot, able to do anything from write fiction and answer questions to generate spam emails, BlenderBot 3 is a narrower project: it can have a conversation with you. That focus allows it to bring in other expertise, though, and one of Meta’s most significant successes is hooking the language model up to the broader internet. In other words: “BlenderBot 3 is capable of searching the internet to chat about virtually any topic.” Continue reading...

Families in Gwynedd county are being evicted as swathes of property are converted to short-term rentals for the tourism industry – and the situation being played out across the country. Can anything be done to help?Sitting at her kitchen table, a shellshocked Cherylyn Houston reflects on an ordeal that is finally over. It all started in September 2021. Houston, a 42-year-old secondary school teacher, opened the door to find her landlady on her doorstep. “She said: ‘I’m really sorry. My circumstances have changed and I need to give you six months’ notice. I can get four times as much money on Airbnb and I’d like you to leave, ideally by March, so I can start the new season.’”At the time, Houston was living in a four-bedroom cottage in the village of Dinorwig, in the county of Gwynedd, north Wales. Houston, her two teenage children and their stepfather had lived there since January 2020 and never been late on their £800-a-month rent. She pulls out her phone. “Christmas was heaven,” she sighs, pausing on an image of the spacious kitchen with a flagstone floor and log-burning stove. “You’d just snuggle down and close the curtains.” Continue reading...

Launched on Friday, the conversational AI fueled by material found online spews uncomfortable truths and blatant liesIf you’re worried that artificial intelligence is getting too smart, talking to Meta’s AI chatbot might make you feel better.Launched on Friday, BlenderBot is a prototype of Meta’s conversational AI, which, according to Facebook’s parent company, can converse on nearly any topic. On the demo website, members of the public are invited to chat with the tool and share feedback with developers. The results thus far, writers at Buzzfeed and Vice have pointed out, have been rather interesting. Continue reading...

Professional test driver using Tesla’s Full Self-Driving mode repeatedly hit a child-sized mannequin in its pathA safe-technology advocacy group issued claimed on Tuesday that Tesla’s full self-driving software represents a potentially lethal threat to child pedestrians, the latest in a series of claims and investigations into the technology to hit the world’s leading electric carmaker.According to a safety test conducted by the Dawn Project, the latest version of Tesla Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta software repeatedly hit a stationary, child-sized mannequin in its path. The claims that the technology apparently has trouble recognizing children form part of an ad campaign urging the public to pressure Congress to ban Tesla’s auto-driving technology. Continue reading...

Cybersecurity expert Ron Deibert to testify to Canadian MPs about troubling spread of invasive surveillance toolsThe mercenary spyware industry represents “one of the greatest contemporary threats to civil society, human rights and democracy”, a leading cybersecurity expert warns, as countries grapple with the unregulated spread of powerful and invasive surveillance tools.Ron Deibert, a political science professor at the university of Toronto and head of Citizen Lab, will testify in front of a Canadian parliamentary committee on Tuesday afternoon about the growing threat he and others believe the technology poses to citizens and democracies. Continue reading...

Allow a budget of £4,000 to do-it-yourself, from the editing and design through to marketing“A top-of-her-game literary agent tells us she receives about 3,000 submissions a year,” says Joe Sedgwick, the head of writing services at The Literary Consultancy. “Of those, she requests to see the full manuscripts of about 70. Of those writers, she will take on maybe five to 10.”Faced with these odds, many people who dream of getting their writing into the hands of readers are turning to self-publishing. Continue reading...

Users reported the search engine was down and problems with Gmail, Google maps and Google images

Disturbing global trend should be ‘entirely preventable’, says Internet Watch Foundation headIncidents of children aged between seven and 10 being manipulated into recording abuse of themselves have surged by two-thirds over the past six months, according to a global report.Almost 20,000 reports of self-generated child sexual abuse content were seen by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) in the first six months of this year, compared with just under 12,000 for the same period this year. The disturbing global trend has grown rapidly since the initial coronavirus lockdown, with cases involving that age group up 360% since the first half of 2020.The NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. Continue reading...

From tablets and fitness trackers to robot toys, here are some tech ideas to keep the kids entertainedWith the long school summer holiday well under way, you may need a bit of help keeping the kids entertained. From walkie-talkies and cameras to tablets, robot toys and fitness trackers, here are some of the best kid-aimed tech to keep the little (and not-so-little) ones occupied. Continue reading...

In call for tougher rules, consumer rights champion says phone networks cannot be trusted to self-regulatePhone networks are taking advantage of post-Brexit deregulation to baffle customers into racking up large roaming bills on EU holidays, consumer rights champion Martin Lewis has warned.At the end of June, a range of consumer protections that had been introduced after Brexit expired. As a result, phone networks are no longer required to send customers a message with pricing details when they begin roaming, nor to cap the maximum data roaming fees that can be charged monthly. Networks also no longer need to provide protections against inadvertent roaming. Continue reading...