Hundreds join action at online retailer's Coventry site in standoff over pay, conditions and union rightsThis is a picket line," says Rachel Fagan emphatically. The GMB union's Midlands regional organiser stands in front of a line of striking workers several rows deep at Amazon's vast BHX4 warehouse in Coventry, during industrial action designed to embarrass the online behemoth during a high-profile sales event.About 900 workers at the Coventry warehouse are taking three days of strike action from 11 July to 13 July, coinciding with its Prime Day sales event on Tuesday and Wednesday. Along the picket line, one worker holds up a placard carrying the union's familiar refrain: I am not a robot." Continue reading...
Twitter's boss has also challenged Meta's chief executive to a literal dick-measuring contest'. What's got into the billionaire manbaby?The world's richest toddler is at it again. Elon Musk, a very stable tech genius, is throwing a temper tantrum over Mark Zuckerberg launching the Twitter rival Threads. You would think a capitalist such as Musk would welcome a little healthy competition, but he doesn't seem keen to compete in the business arena. Instead, he has challenged Zuckerberg to a literal dick-measuring contest". Musk, who is 52 years old, prefaced that invitation by tweeting: Zuck is a cuck." It's not clear whether he had professional help crafting this zinger or if it came to him in a flash of brilliance.How is Twitter's new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, enjoying all this, I wonder? She probably thought she would be stewarding a struggling tech company's return to greatness; instead, she is managing a manbaby's outbursts. She probably expected she would be leading complex strategy meetings; instead, one imagines, she is being briefed by her underlings about what a cuck is. Continue reading...
Meta wants its new rival to be a friendly, news-free space. But with missing features, it might not leave Elon Musk's platform in the dust quite yet Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereIt feels as if the death of Twitter has been greatly exaggerated since Elon Musk took ownership of the company. Indeed, it's not Musk, but Meta's launch of Threads - which has 100 million-plus users in a matter of days - that could be the biggest threat to Twitter at present. Threads, though, appears to be a very different social media beast. For starters, Meta's response to Twitter is accessed through your Instagram account, meaning you can automatically follow the accounts you already follow on Instagram. And though it looks quite similar to Twitter, with short text-based posts, it differs in key ways.Friendly and news-free Continue reading...
Can 100 million new users be wrong? You betI signed up for Threads the other day, somewhat against my better judgment. After all, Threads doesn't have the best blood lines; nothing in its lineage suggests that it will be the secretariat of social media good behavior or ethics.It is the spawn of Meta, which we still might know as Facebook if Mark Zuckerberg and his brain trust hadn't decided to rename their behemoth after its many reputation-damaging misdeeds. Those include allowing users' data to leak out, as well as distributing untold amounts of hate and lies and ultimately, giving Donald Trump an invaluable helping hand in his disastrous 2016 election by spreading Russian disinformation. (Recall, too, the scandal surrounding Facebook's relationship with the political data firm Cambridge Analytica.)Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture Continue reading...
The platform's parent company has gotten into several knots before about mishandling sensitive informationIn just a matter of days, Meta's new Threads app has reached 100 million users, solidifying the Twitter competitor's claim to the title of the most rapidly downloaded app ever.That rapid growth has concerned privacy experts, who warn that few users realize just how much information the app collects. They point out that Meta has put the launch of Threads in the European Union on hold because it's unclear whether the way the company handles user data and shares it across different platforms, including Threads, will run afoul of impending privacy regulations. Continue reading...
Judge looking into alleged hacking of ministers' phones with NSO Group spyware says Israel has not responded to requestsA Spanish judge investigating the alleged hacking of ministers' phones with Pegasus spyware has shelved his investigation over a complete" lack of cooperation from Israel, a court statement said on Monday.In June 2022, Jose Luis Calama said he had sent a formal request for international judicial assistance, known as a letter rogatory, to the Israeli government asking for information about the software made by the Israeli firm NSO Group. Continue reading...
Shadow work and pensions secretary will talk up possibilities of artificial intelligence as colleague discusses dangers for workersLabour would use artificial intelligence to help those looking for work prepare their CVs, find jobs and receive payments faster, according to the party's shadow work and pensions secretary.Jonathan Ashworth told the Guardian he thought the Department for Work and Pensions was wasting millions of pounds by not using cutting-edge technology, even as the party also says AI could also cause massive disruption to the jobs market. Continue reading...
Comedian known for Miranda Sings character faces accusations of inappropriate behavior with minors and wearing blackfaceColleen Ballinger's podcast Oversharing and several of her live shows have now been canceled as the YouTuber known for her satirical teenage persona Miranda Sings continues to face criticism for allegedly behaving inappropriately toward underaged fans and wearing blackface.Ballinger's co-host, Trisha Paytas, called the ordeal embarrassing" in a YouTube video this week, confirming that the duo's podcast would end after just three episodes. Continue reading...
US comedian and two other authors say artificial intelligence models used their work without permissionThe US comedian and author Sarah Silverman is suing the ChatGPT developer OpenAI and Mark Zuckerberg's Meta for copyright infringement over claims that their artificial intelligence models were trained on her work without permission.Silverman has filed the suits along with two authors, Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey, in which they claim the AI models developed by OpenAI and Meta used their work as part of their training data. Continue reading...
Twitter owner calls Facebook founder a cuck' as rancour grows over launch of Threads, a competitor to Musk's networkTwitter owner Elon Musk has suggested he and Mark Zuckerberg should have a literal dick-measuring contest" in the latest broadside aimed at his rival billionaire.In a message inspired by the Meta chief executive's launch last week of Threads, a Twitter competitor, Musk added a ruler emoji. Continue reading...
Shops, hotels, even dentists: absolutely everyone who takes your money wants to know how they are doing (or drilling). It's driving me up the wallMulti-grit sandpaper, a water butt connector pipe link kit", a five-pack of AAA batteries, slow blow" fuses, vacuum cleaner bags, a tea towel and nail clippers. Tidying my inbox, I see these are some of the things I've been asked to give feedback on recently. The purveyors of these high-end lifestyle items - truly worthy of my aspiration to become an aesthete" of the week in the Financial Times - would love my thoughts. So here goes: no idea; no idea; generated electricity adequately; no idea; yes, they are vaccum cleaner bags; what tea towel ... Hang on, I actually do have an opinion on the nail clippers. The business end - the beak? - is deeper than normal, so I keep nicking my fingertips. No stars.I see from searching for the dread phrase Love to hear from you" that the dentist who hasn't answered my plaintive queries about my broken tooth also wants feedback, as does the chain hotel where I left my favourite skirt, leading to multiple unanswered phone calls and them eventually denying all knowledge of it. It's time to get my Oprah on - you get zero stars and you get zero stars, and you, and you! Continue reading...
Data shows the micro-blogging website has been shedding users since early 2023, not long after Elon Musk's takeoverTwitter's website traffic is tanking" according to the chief of internet services company Cloudflare, amid signs users are migrating to alternative platforms such as Threads, BlueSky and Mastodon.On Sunday, Matthew Prince posted a graph from Cloudflare's ranking of the most popular websites in the world showing Twitter has been in decline since the start of 2023, not long after Elon Musk took over the platform. Continue reading...
Long reviled by Twitter's owner, @elonmusksjet is now tracking the billionaire's jet from the new social media appThe college student whose Twitter account monitored the course of Elon Musk's private jet has moved his tracking project to Meta's newly launched Threads.On Thursday, Jack Sweeney, a Florida college student and aviation enthusiast, launched his first post on Threads under the handle @elonmusksjet after Twitter suspended his tracking operation last December. Continue reading...
HateAid in Germany alerted the social media giant to antisemitic and racist tweets, which were not taken downTwitter faces a landmark legal challenge after the social media giant failed to remove a series of hate-filled tweets reported by users in what could be a turning point in establishing new standards of scrutiny regarding online antisemitism.The California-based company, owned since last year by Elon Musk, was alerted to six antisemitic or otherwise racist tweets in January this year by researchers at HateAid, a German organisation that campaigns for human rights in the digital space, and the European Union of Jewish Students EUJS but did not remove them from its platform despite the tweets apparently clearly contravening its own moderation policy. Continue reading...
White nationalist Richard Spencer and white supremacist Nick Fuentes join app, according to Media MattersMark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Meta, has said he wants to make kindness" a focus of his company's new Threads app.Following the launch of the app last week, Zuckerberg hoped to draw a direct contrast to Twitter which, with more than 250 million users, has seen a surge in hate speech and misinformation since Elon Musk took over as CEO. Continue reading...
Developers should grasp the opportunity to address misogyny in society rather than entrench it, says Liz JacksonYour article (Never underestimate a droid: robots gather at AI for Good summit in Geneva, 6 July) begins by listing four of the robot delegates that are attending the AI for Good summit - all four are feminised robots" - and I remembered the thought I had when I saw Ai-Da perform poetry at the Ashmolean in Oxford in 2021: why does a robot need boobs?Robotics and AI are fields undoubtedly occupied primarily by men and yet many robots, and AI assistants (think Siri, Alexa and so on) often take on a feminised" form. Perhaps we are more comfortable telling a feminised voice to do things for us. Continue reading...
The US author's violent tale of death row inmates starring in gladiatorial contests for mass entertainment is an intriguing conceit, but its execution is heavy-handedNana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's Chain-Gang All-Stars comes to publication freighted with hype because of its stark envisioning of American death row prisoners forced to fight one another to the bloody end, with the bouts televised. The prisoners are mainly Black and they become stars in the entertainment industry on the outside", with gimmicky names and basic, almost caveman-like signature weapons. Instead of the Norse god Thor's hammer Mjolnir, here there's a hammer called Hass Omaha, a scythe named LoveGuile and a mace labelled Vega. The inmates have the chance to move up the fighters' league and finally be free - if they kill enough of their fellow prisoners. A giant fighter called Barry Harris - fight name Rave Bear - looked like he'd been pulled from a woodchipper" by the end of a match. Other characters are called Hurricane Staxxx, Gunny Puddles, Ring Ya Bells - an overripe blend of gamer IDs, B-movie love interests, prison nicknames, wrestling monikers and pure grand guignol.The novel is a crushingly painful, loaded and on-the-nose commentary on racism, exploitation, inequality and the legacy and loud echoes of slavery in the US. The prison system, big business, the entertainment industry, local policing, tech surveillance and the military have all fused into one hellish mega-complex: the fighters are pushed around by soldier-police", their every move recorded and broadcast, both for security and to scintillate their reality TV audience; their magnetised restraints made from the latest tech, their fights sponsored by food and beverage brands and trumpeted as family entertainment. Indeed, as one character reflects: All other sport was just a metaphor for this." Yet the result is that millions of viewers worldwide are consuming poison, no matter how savoury the package". Continue reading...
A new Cambridge University institute will try to harness the good and anticipate the bad effects of artificial intelligenceStephen Cave has considerable experience of well-intentioned actions that have unhappy consequences. A former senior diplomat in the foreign office during the New Labour era, he was involved in treaty negotiations which later - and unexpectedly - unravelled to trigger several international events that included Brexit. I know the impact of well-meant global events that have gone wrong," he admits.His experience could prove valuable, however. The former diplomat, now a senior academic, is about to head a new Cambridge University institute which will investigate all aspects of artificial intelligence in a bid to pinpoint the intellectual perils we face from the growing prowess of computers and to highlight its positive uses. An appreciation of the dangers of unintended consequences should come in handy. There has been a lot of emphasis in the media on AI leading to human extinction or the collapse of civilisation," says Cave. These fears are exaggerated but that does not mean AI will not cause harm to society if we are not careful." Continue reading...
... and discovered a hall of mirrors. Can the 70 million who signed up in two days last week to Mark Zuckerberg's new social media have got it wrong?It's a truth universally acknowledged that there is the real world, with all its sprawling ambiguity and apathy, and then there is Twitter, where absolute certainty and tribal division reign supreme. And it's a further truth, almost as widely accepted, that if you want to be an opinion-former, wield influence and make an impact, you had better not spend too much time in the real world.Yet for the past 17 years that is where I've chosen to remain. A journalist without Twitter is a bit like an exhibitionist who's agoraphobic - how are you going to be seen? And what chance do you have of generating that digital meteorological phenomenon of which we all, individuals and businesses, walk in awed terror: the Twitterstorm? Continue reading...
Data from Greg Johnson's Counter-Currents sheds light on how organization promotes its ideology onlineA data leak from the website of a white nationalist publisher has revealed recordings, published and unpublished documents, and hitherto private interview recordings that shed light on the way in which the organization promotes its ideology online.The internal data from Counter-Currents, a publishing house co-founded and run by notoriously secretive far-right ideologue Greg Johnson, was exposed in an Amazon cloud storage container that was left unlocked on the open internet. Continue reading...
Four Guardian reporters on the platform that defined the early years of their career - and what its end might mean for themFor months now, Twitter users have been anticipating the platform's demise. The technology is buggy and often appears to be breaking down. There's a new corporate crisis every week. It's a strange feeling to witness the death spiral of a major social media platform - not a planned shutdown or an attempted government ban, but a social network becoming a ghost town before our very eyes.This week Mark Zuckerberg successfully launched Threads, a Twitter competitor that claimed 70m sign-ups by its second day. It has been widely interpreted as a potential death blow to an already struggling platform. Continue reading...
Would wind and fog stop the PhD student getting the shot she was after?Dominika Koszowska is a self-confessed night owl but she had woken up extra early that morning with the goal of capturing the sunrise. The photographer, who is studying for a PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, Poland, was visiting the Faroe Islands with her friend Michal.The weather outside our rented cottage wasn't encouraging; it was grey and gloomy, but we decided to head for the Skeidhsskardh mountain anyway. We arrived to wind and huge amounts of fog. Michal walked ahead, and suddenly it began to lift. It ended up being one of the most beautiful sunrises I've ever seen, and I was able to capture him looking out over this spectacle of nature with my phone." Continue reading...
It's not enough to build learning around a single societal shift. Students should be trained to handle a rapidly changing worldFrom one day to the next, our profession was wiped out. We woke up and discovered our skills were redundant." This is what two successful graphic designers told me about the impact of AI. The old promise - creative workers would be better protected than others from mechanisation - imploded overnight. If visual artists can be replaced by machines, who is safe?There's no talk of a just transition" for graphic designers, or the other professions about to be destroyed. And while there's plenty of talk about how education might change, little has been done to equip students for a world whose conditions shift so fast. It's not just at work that young people will confront sudden changes of state. They are also likely to witness cascading environmental breakdown and the collapse of certain human-made systems.George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Ford's Mustang Mach-E lets motorists drive hands-free in UK (T&Cs apply: motorways only; don't look away for too long)Taking your hands off the steering wheel while driving on a busy M11 motorway in Essex at 70mph feels like a counterintuitive leap of faith.When a display flashes blue on the dashboard the moment has come: let go, and the car continues in its lane with no input from feet or hands. Continue reading...
San Francisco's Safe Street Rebel group are disabling autonomous taxis by placing a cone on the hood of the carA group of San Francisco organizers are encouraging people to put traffic cones on the hoods of driverless vehicles as a form of protest against the cars' expansion on city streets.A video of the group's actions with step-by-step instructions on how to disable a robo-taxi with a cone has gone viral on Twitter and sparked intense debates about the pros and cons of autonomous vehicles and the value of protesting in this way. Continue reading...
Microblogging platform apparently fastest-downloaded ever, with Elon Musk threatening to sue over copycat' app Could Meta's Threads deal a knockout blow to Twitter?Mark Zuckerberg's Twitter-killer" Threads has reached 70m sign-ups in less than 48 hours, as it more than doubled its growth from its first day on app stores.The new microblogging platform was launched in 100 countries this week . It immediately accumulated significant numbers of users, hitting more than 30 million within its first 24 hours, apparently making it the fastest downloaded app ever. On Friday, however, Zuckerberg announced on his Threads account that the user total had more than doubled that figure. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent on (#6CSNC)
While AI revolutionises medicine, bleaker alternatives present themselves, UN's AI for Good conference findsHumanity is at a crossroads that may be summed up as AI for good v AI gone bad, according to a leading artificial intelligence expert.I see two futures here," the author Prof Gary Marcus told the UN's AI for Good global summit on Friday. Continue reading...
Mark Zuckerberg's rival social network is first serious threat to Twitter since Elon Musk takeoverIf Threads truly is a Twitter-killer then it claims it is going to do it with kindness". Mark Zuckerberg, whose company Meta launched the rival platform this week, put forward the idea that positivity would be a big difference for a product that looks remarkably similar to its rival.We are definitely focusing on kindness and making this a friendly place," he wrote on his Threads account. Continue reading...
Foundation says words contradict reality of Instagram, which contributed to suicide of London teenagerA charity launched by the family of Molly Russell has labelled Mark Zuckerberg's pledge to prioritise kindness on his new Threads app as absurd", as the Twitter rival raced past 70 million users less than 48 hours after launch.Molly, 14, killed herself in 2017 after viewing harmful content on social media platforms including Instagram. An inquest ruled last year that dangerous online material related to self-harm, suicide and depression had contributed to her death. Continue reading...
This week in artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is either going to save humanity or finish it off, depending on who you speak to. Either way, every week there are new developments and breakthroughs. Here are some of the AI stories that have emerged in recent days. The consumer champion Martin Lewis has urged the government to take action against AI-powered generative deepfakes after he found that scammers were using an artificially generated version of him to defraud consumers. Lewis posted a fake video on Thursday of him apparently backing an Elon Musk project, and warned that without action against similar videos lives would be ruined. Continue reading...
Limits on number of tweets users can see have prevented National Weather Service from receiving key reportsTwitter's new volume limits on viewing posts suddenly left several National Weather Service (NWS) offices across the US unable to receive tweets from storm spotters who help with tracking extreme weather, including during storms this week - prompting safety warnings.NWS Boulder in Colorado announced on 4 July that due to Twitter's limits, implemented as part of Elon Musk's abrupt changes to the platform's usability late last month, we are unable to access most tweets at this time. Send reports to our other social media accounts or direct through our email/phone lines." The story was first reported by the Denver Post. Continue reading...
by Hannah Devlin Science correspondent in Geneva on (#6CS65)
Exclusive: Prof Stuart Russell says technology could result in fewer teachers being employed - possibly even none'Recent advances in AI are likely to spell the end of the traditional school classroom, one of the world's leading experts on AI has predicted.Prof Stuart Russell, a British computer scientist based at the University of California, Berkeley, said that personalised ChatGPT-style tutors have the potential to hugely enrich education and widen global access by delivering personalised tuition to every household with a smartphone. The technology could feasibly deliver most material through to the end of high school", he said. Continue reading...
In a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a lawyer for the Elon Musk-owned app said Meta had unlawfully misappropriated trade secretsTwitter has threatened to sue Meta over its new Threads app, which Mark Zuckerberg has openly billed as a rival, claiming the company has violated Twitter's intellectual property rights".In a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, first published by the news outlet Semafor, a lawyer for Twitter said the company has serious concerns that Meta Platforms (Meta) has engaged in systematic, willful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property". Continue reading...
Meta has been struggling with layoffs, a fledgling metaverse and a decreasing audience. The company needs its new big bet to pay offMeta has launched a Twitter killer" app, a nearly direct copy of the microblogging platform that was built to lure users away from the increasingly dysfunctional Elon Musk-owned company. But will it bring Meta the boost it has been looking for?Experts say it may. Continue reading...
Meta founder says rival platform will focus on kindness' as it claims 30 million users within day of launchMark Zuckerberg has taken a swipe at Elon Musk's Twitter as his competitor to the platform, Threads, reached 30m sign-ups less than 24 hours after launching.The chief executive and founder of Meta used his new Threads account to say Twitter had not nailed" its opportunity to become a mega app and implied that it had underachieved because of the amount of hostility on the microblogging platform. Continue reading...
Site has potential to suck the remaining life - and advertising revenue - out of Musk's struggling networkImagine a social network where users have invested so much social capital in putting up data about themselves that it is impossible to imagine them leaving. Moving to a new site would be an enormous risk for users because you would lose your network of friends. The network's entire existence, the theory goes, is secured by these barriers to starting afresh at a new outlet.This was how the Guardian described Myspace in 2007, when the early social network had 150 million global users, a number so large it was considered improbable that they would ever move elsewhere. (In the end Myspace was soon overtaken by Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook, Rupert Murdoch lost almost all the money he spent buying the site, and Myspace's once-ubiquitous founder Tom Anderson has travelled the world on the profits ever since.) Continue reading...
The annual Crap Games Competition has been bringing Spectrum fans together for more than 25 years. It all began with an April fool's joke in a magazine called Your Sinclair ...Retro video games have never been more popular, mostly because gamers have never been older. The home-computer generation of players are now in their 40s and 50s, and as we get older, we're spending more time down memory lane. Who wouldn't want to replay the classics of their youth on mini versions of the original consoles and computers, or even on a phone?The ZX Spectrum - released in 1982 - had only eight basic colours, a rubber keyboard and 48K of RAM (your 4GB RAM phone has nearly 90,000 times more); nonetheless, some still view it like others view the Beatles. Games such as Manic Miner, Chuckie Egg and Atic Atac were truly original, unlike anything seen before. But some remember it just as fondly for being, well, a bit crap. Continue reading...
by Hannah J Davies, Hannah Verdier and Nyima Jobe on (#6CRC8)
In this week's newsletter: The Serial makers reveal the agony female patients were put through at the Yale Fertility Center in The Retrievals. Plus: five of the best podcasts about human connection
Gary Wilcox allegedly performed to graphically sexual and violent songs while wearing his robes at court and in chambersA judge in New Jersey is under investigation for allegedly filming TikTok videos in which he lip-synced to popular songs, at times in his bed or his judicial chambers.Last Friday, the advisory committee on judicial conduct in New Jersey's supreme court filed a complaint against Gary Wilcox, a 58-year-old superior court judge who presides over criminal cases in Bergen county. Continue reading...
New app developed by Facebook and WhatsApp owner is due to launch in the UK and US on ThursdayMark Zuckerberg's rival to Twitter will not launch in the EU on Thursday amid regulatory uncertainty about the service's use of personal data.Sources at Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said regulations were behind the postponement of an EU launch, amid a series of clashes between the social media group and the bloc. Continue reading...
Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay allege that their books, which are copyrighted, were used to train' ChatGPT because the chatbot generated very accurate summaries' of the worksTwo authors have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the company behind the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, claiming that the organisation breached copyright law by training" its model on novels without the permission of authors.Mona Awad, whose books include Bunny and 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, and Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World, filed the class action complaint to a San Francisco federal court last week. Continue reading...
ChatGPT is creating headaches for schools while giving rise to a growing cohort of companies that say they can tell' human from machineSince its release last November, ChatGPT has shaken the education world. The chatbot and other sophisticated AI tools are reportedly being used everywhere from college essays to high school art projects. A recent survey of 1,000 students at four-year universities by Intelligent.com found that 30% of college students have reported using ChatGPT on written assignments.This is a problem for schools, educators and students - but a boon for a small but growing cohort of companies in the AI-detection business. Players like Winston AI, Content at Scale and Turnitin are billing for their ability to detect AI-involvement in student work, offering subscription services where teachers can run their students' work through a web dashboard and receive a probability score that grades how human" or AI" the text is. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6CQAY)
Android maker's first foldable has sleeker design, simpler software and top camera, but wallet-busting priceGoogle's first folding phone-tablet hybrid is finally here to give Samsung's leading Z Fold a run for its money, with different ideas of how such a cutting-edge device should work and a serious camera upgrade.The Pixel Fold costs a colossal 1,749 ($1,799), which is 100 more than the already eye-wateringly expensive rival from Samsung, and more than twice the price of Google's top regular phone, the 849 Pixel 7 Pro. That puts the Pixel Fold in the rarefied company of ultra-premium gadgets, best thought of as the Ferraris or Bentleys of the phone world. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian