According to the New York Times, the dismissals are regarded as the company’s response to the recent unionization victoryAmazon has reportedly fired over half a dozen senior managers who were involved in a New York warehouse union.The firings, which took place outside the company’s employee review cycle, was regarded as the company’s response to the Amazon Labor Union which formed in Staten Island last month in a “historic victory” against the country’s second largest employer, the New York Times reported, citing former and current employees who spoke on the condition anonymity. Continue reading...
Jack Dorsey’s first tweet sold for $2.9m in 2021 then could not get past $14,000 at auction last month. But some projects have thrivedIt was described as the Mona Lisa of the digital world and it came with a connoisseur’s price tag: $2.9m (£2.4m) for the first tweet by Twitter’s co-founder. This was March 2021 and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, were bursting into the mainstream.One year on, an attempt to sell on Jack Dorsey’s Twitter debut for $25m was pulled after auction bids topped out at just $14,000 (£11,350). Explosive growth of NFTs over the past 12 months has levelled off, and may even be in decline, according to analysis of the sector, as attention consolidates around a few of the largest players. Continue reading...
by Alexi Duggins, Hollie Richardson, Hannah Verdier a on (#5YWZJ)
In this week’s newsletter: Colonia LeBaron was meant to be a Mormon utopia – then a family fallout saw organised crime reign. Find out more in Deliver Us From Ervil. Plus: five must-listen music podcasts
In this week’s newsletter: Dall-E 2 can conjure vivid pictures of dogs in berets to astronauts playing basketball. It also represents every major ethical concern there is about AI.
British MPs invite tycoon to discuss plans for platform in more depth before parliamentary committeeElon Musk has said Twitter may charge a “slight” fee for commercial and government users, in the latest hint of the changes the world’s richest person could introduce after he completes his takeover of the social media platform.“Twitter will always be free for casual users, but maybe a slight cost for commercial/government users,” Musk said in a tweet. In another tweet, he added: “Some revenue is better than none!” Continue reading...
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington and Sam Jone on (#5YV1M)
Data leak reveals scale of potential surveillance by NSO Group client believed to be MoroccoMore than 200 Spanish mobile numbers were selected as possible targets for surveillance by an NSO Group client believed to be Morocco, according to the data leak at the heart of the Pegasus project.Details of the scale of the apparent targeting came as Spain’s highest criminal court opened an investigation into how the mobile phones of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the defence minister, Margarita Robles, came to be infected with Pegasus spyware last year. Continue reading...
Rocket Lab test successfully hooks booster in midair before having to drop it into South PacificA space company has briefly managed to catch a falling rocket using a helicopter and a hook in a test described by its chief executive as “something of a supersonic ballet”.The test was part of Rocket Lab’s attempts to find relatively low-cost ways of recovering rockets for multiple missions to space. Continue reading...
Government fears damage of losing out to New York in battle to attract tech floatationsBoris Johnson has joined the lobbying effort to convince the British-based chip designer Arm to float in London, as the government fears the damage of losing out to New York in the battle to attract high-profile tech companies looking to list.After the collapse of the $66bn sale of the Cambridge-based business to US-based Nvidia earlier this year, Masayoshi Son, the chief executive of Arm’s Japanese parent company Softbank, immediately snubbed the UK for a flotation. Continue reading...
Japanese gaming company behind Final Fantasy series secures deal with Sweden-based EmbracerThe Japanese gaming company behind Final Fantasy is selling off three studios, including the rights to hit franchises including Tomb Raider, in a $300m (£240m) deal.Tokyo-based Square Enix has sold US-headquartered Crystal Dynamics and Canada-based Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal to the Nasdaq-listed Swedish gaming group Embracer. Continue reading...
Cryptocurrency smothered by congestion due to high demand for plots of land in multiplayer game OthersideA multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency company has apologised to users after its sale of “metaverse land” sparked a frenzy that temporarily overwhelmed the Ethereum cryptocurrency.Yuga Labs, the company behind the Bored Ape NFTs beloved of Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton, announced the sale of its latest tokens – representing plots of land in a forthcoming multiplayer game called Otherside – on Sunday. A total of 55,000 plots were sold, at a flat price of 305 ApeCoin (a currency created by Yuga), which is worth about £4,500 at current exchange rates. Continue reading...
Company accused of abusing market position to limit rivals’ access to technology required for tap-and-go transactionsEU regulators have charged Apple with breaking competition law by limiting rivals’ access to technology that is key to making contactless payments, unfairly benefiting its own Apple Pay service.The European Commission said on Monday that Apple “sets the rules” on its closed platform and expressed concern that it has been limiting access to technology called near field communication (NFC), which rivals need for tap-and-go payments to be made in stores using mobile wallets. Continue reading...
Be bold and get close, try wide-angle lenses, and see if you can operate your camera on manualThe award-winning Guardian photographer David Levene offers tips on how to get a good picture. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5YS09)
Solar charging GPS watch has excellent health and fitness tracking and rugged designGarmin’s latest rugged solar-powered smartwatch, the Instinct 2, promises unlimited battery life. You just have to stay in the sun.Looking more like a rugged digital watch such as Casio’s legendary G-Shock than an Apple or Samsung smartwatch, the Garmin feels made to take a beating with its monochrome screen, physical buttons and sturdy body. Continue reading...
Andrew Rea’s ‘try, fail and try again’ YouTube cookery show – in which he often cooks food from films and cartoons – gets more viewers than Nigella, Jamie Oliver and Tom Kerridge combined. But its massive, viral success nearly cost the self-taught chef his mental healthAndrew Rea is one of the biggest chefs in the world, though that’s no guarantee you’ve heard of him. He has no TV show. No restaurant ever bore his name. He has never worked as a chef, nor attended culinary school. He is almost entirely self-taught, he says, from watching cookery videos online. This isn’t hard to believe. To watch Rea cook is as much an instruction of what not to do. Sauces are surrendered. Soufflés are sunk. He once took seven attempts to make cacio e pepe, a pasta dish famous for including just cheese and pepper. He succeeds mostly because he fails. It’s part of the charm. He’s not, he’ll happily admit, a professional cook in any meaningful sense – apart from the fact that he now earns millions doing it.Rea’s YouTube cookery channel, Babish Culinary Universe – named after his favourite character from The West Wing, a slightly incongruous call that rapidly became too big to fiddle with – currently boasts 9.5m subscribers. That’s a lot. Nigella Lawson’s latest TV series – Eat, Cook, Repeat, which aired during England’s second national lockdown – was considered a ratings smash with 3m viewers, over 1m more than her previous show. Rea’s videos, meanwhile, regularly rack up hits in the tens of millions. Continue reading...
The Washington DC shooting was the most recent to spawn out of the extremist culture of unregulated ‘chan’ message boardsWhen police in Washington DC burst into a fifth-floor apartment building on 22 April in search of a man who allegedly had shot four people at random, they found Raymond Spencer dead by his own hand, a cache of guns and ammunition, and a poster with an ironic white supremacist meme.The poster invoking the meme, popular on the extremist online forum 4chan, was a stark reminder that this attack blamed on Spencer, 23, was only the most recent mass casualty attack to spawn out of the ugly extremist culture of unregulated internet message boards such as 4chan. Continue reading...
Musk’s acquisition of the media platform will be a boon for free speech, he says. Governments are the ones to judge thatOn Friday 8 January 2021, Twitter kicked Donald Trump off its platform and an eerie calm enveloped parts of our global public sphere. Depriving him of his online megaphone was a compelling demonstration of how a tech platform had acquired an awesome power – the ability effectively to silence an elected president.But what kind of power is it really? Many years ago, in a landmark book, Power: A Radical View, the sociologist Steven Lukes wrote that power comes in three varieties: the ability to stop people doing what they want to do; the ability to compel them to do what they don’t want to do; and the ability to shape the way they think. Continue reading...
Scams relating to digital ‘coins’ are growing – but data reveals authorities are making record seizures of assets tooIn July 2021, specialist police officers in Manchester swooped on an international cryptocurrency scam, seizing USB sticks and an online safe containing £16m worth of digital coins, mostly ethereum.A month earlier, Leicestershire police had confiscated 10 types of cryptocurrency after raiding the home of a drug dealer who used digital assets to buy and sell class A drugs. Continue reading...
by Alexi Duggins, Hollie Richardson, Hannah Verdier a on (#5YMYD)
The actor takes a hopeful look at the ideas to save our environment, alongside guests from Adam McKay to Prince William. Plus: five investigative podcasts we couldn’t switch off
What is driving the box-office success of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, reboots of classic games such as Crazy Taxi and even talk of a Sega Cinematic Universe?Sega, it seems, is having a moment. The veteran publisher’s movie sequel Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has become a huge box office success, hitting $300m in revenue, despite lukewarm reviews. It was also revealed that a film version of classic brawler Streets of Rage is in development, scripted by John Wick creator Derek Kolstad; some are postulating that this could be the beginning of a Sega Cinematic Universe. And last week, sources within the company revealed to Bloomberg that reboots of classic early 2000s titles Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio are in development, part of a new Super Games initiative to build Fortnite-like communities around its titles.Why so much Sega? Why now? Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has perhaps arrived at a good time with families venturing out to cinemas once again, desperate for something lighthearted that everyone can enjoy – and not having much choice when they reach the multiplex. And whatever you think about the finer points of the movie, it’s fast and fun, with an amusing performance from Idris Elba as Knuckles and Jim Carrey back to his hammy, gurning best. It captures the feel of those original Mega Drive games, with their madcap, screwball energy and bright, blue-sky optimism. Continue reading...
Unicef says virus is ‘canary in the coalmine’ that shows up the gaps in vaccination campaigns for preventable illnessMeasles cases have surged nearly 80% worldwide this year amid disruption caused by Covid-19, the UN has said, warning that the rise of the “canary in a coalmine” illness indicated that outbreaks of other diseases were likely to be on the way.The coronavirus pandemic has interrupted vaccination campaigns for non-Covid diseases around the world, creating a “perfect storm” that could put millions of children’s lives at risk, the UN’s children’s agency Unicef and the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement. Continue reading...
The Facebook parent company is continuing a major rebrand of its products and focusing more heavily on the metaverseMeta made a cautious recovery on Wednesday with its first earnings report since a disastrous fourth quarter, sending shares up 13% in after-hours trading.The company’s reported total revenue for the quarter was $27.91bn, missing analysts’ estimates of $28.20bn, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Wednesday’s earnings are Meta’s first since a dramatic report in February, when Meta lost a record $230bn in market value after revealing that Facebook had recorded its first-ever drop in daily user numbers. Continue reading...
Acquisition agreement allows Musk to tweet about deal but not to disparage firm or its representativesControversy grew on Wednesday over tweets from Elon Musk engaging with criticism of Twitter employees, despite a promise from the entrepreneur not to “disparage” the company or its representatives while he completes the deal to acquire the social media platform.The world’s richest man agreed to restrictions on his tweets as part of a 95-page agreement covering his $44bn acquisition filed on Tuesday. Continue reading...
For his own good, my soon-to-be-18-year-old needs to understand sport. It’s the only way he’ll survive. Unfortunately, 90s video games are of limited useMy son Charlie will be 18 soon. Like all Scottish males before him, he will be dropped on a Hebridean island with nothing but a rusty knife and his own anger. If he can’t make it back to the mainland, he will live the rest of his life among feral, abandoned Scottish sons, and he will only survive if he likes sport, because that’s how any group of men get through enforced time together.He tried sport as a kid, but as he is on the autism spectrum, he was obsessed with rules to the point where if he felt another kid broke them, he would pick the ball up and stop the game. He was basically human VAR. It never ended well. So I’ve decided I’m going to use my favourite 90s video games as a Trojan horse. And there is only one place to start. Continue reading...
David Kaye, Jillian York, Jeff Kosseff and Roger NcNamee discuss the choices at the billionaire’s disposalHere’s a juxtaposition that many American observers may have missed in the hubbub over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter: just last Friday the European Union provisionally agreed to the most far-reaching internet regulation in a generation. The Digital Services Act, or DSA, will force the largest online platforms to be transparent about their activities and assess and mitigate the harms their products may cause. And it’s just the start. Governments around the world have their sights set on regulating big tech. It’s a big enough issue for the billionaire owners of other platforms; imagine the pressures Musk will face when governments dangle benefits for Tesla or SpaceX in exchange for tougher content moderation against their critics.David Kaye is a law professor at UC Irvine and author of Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet Continue reading...
Supply issues, inflation and war in Ukraine fuel Google parent company’s first-quarter strugglesAlphabet’s first quarter revenue fell below analysts’ expectations on Tuesday, as the company confronts supply chain problems, inflation concerns, and fallout from the war in Ukraine.In its quarterly earnings report, Google’s parent company said it had made a quarterly profit of $16.436bn, or $24.62 per share, missing expectations of $25.76 per share. Continue reading...
Analysis: Experts warn against reinstating banned accounts and neglecting moderationWelcome back Donald Trump, Katie Hopkins, David Icke and Alex Jones? These are just some of the Twitter accounts that could be reinstated if the platform’s new owner-in-waiting, “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk, practices what he preaches.All of those accounts have been permanently suspended from the platform for infractions that include, most notoriously, the former US president’s alleged support for the Capitol riot on 6 January last year. Their reinstatement now appears to be back in play given that the world’s richest man has agreed a $44bn (£35bn) takeover of the platform that banned them and has stated that “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy”. Continue reading...
The ultimate shitposter has bought up Twitter, and its denizens are angry – how entirely appropriateSpeaking a few hours ago about Twitter purchaser Elon Musk, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey declared: “I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.” Bless. This feels like the first flashback scene we see in a dystopian drama after the words “SIX MONTHS EARLIER …” Quite where we’ll be in six months’ time as far as Twitter is concerned remains tantalisingly unclear, but it seems difficult to imagine it will be either a more or less pleasant space. It’s a social media platform. I’m not sure what further evidence humanity needs before we cotton on to the idea that such a thing might be an intrinsically toxic concept. Of course, there will always be some people who think it just hasn’t been done right yet. Like communism, or a British version of The Daily Show.Anyway, if Musk’s takeover goes through, he’ll assume control of a platform where the people on the right are incredibly angry about free speech, and those on the left are incredibly angry about hate speech. Which is to say: they have so much in common. As the tech visionary Jaron Lanier has long been excellent at pointing out, the best way to keep people on platforms is to make them angry. So the platforms are designed to make them angry. You might consider the anger worth it for your version of advertising (I myself will post this column on Twitter), but even then it is a weirdly grim cost of doing business that just conceivably ought to be weighed far more carefully than it is.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Trevor Jacob parachuted from the single-engine aircraft and filmed it as it crashed into a remote forest in CaliforniaThe US Federal Aviation Administration has revoked a YouTuber’s pilot license after it concluded that he intentionally crashed his plane for the sake of gaining online views.On 24 November 2021, Trevor Jacob was flying over California’s Los Padres national forest in his small single-engine plane when his propeller stopped working. Continue reading...
The billionaire’s purchase of humanity’s ‘digital town square’ is a culmination of his controversial past on the platformOne of Twitter’s most controversial users became its owner on Monday, after Elon Musk brokered a $44bn deal to buy the company.The move was in many ways the culmination of the billionaire’s long history with the platform. Musk has been on Twitter since 2009 and tweeted as early as 2017 expressing interest in buying it. He has also been a vocal critic of Twitter, calling for changes including rolling back content moderation and prioritizing a “societal imperative” of free speech. Continue reading...
Company close to accepting offer price of $54.20 a share, with deal valuing business at $43bnTwitter is poised to agree a sale to Elon Musk after he put together a $46.5bn (£36.4bn) funding package to acquire the social media platform, according to reports.The company is close to agreeing to Musk’s offer price of $54.20 a share, multiple reports said on Monday, and an announcement could be imminent on a deal valuing the business at $43bn. Continue reading...
A new book exposes Silicon Valley’s use of spiritual concepts and practices to optimise their workers’ productivityCarolyn Chen is a sociologist and UC Berkeley professor who researches religion, race and ethnicity. Her new book, Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley, features in-depth interviews with employees and employers to explore how spirituality begets productivity in the world’s tech hub.As a professor of religion, what sparked your interest in Silicon Valley?
Experts say Wales has huge potential for generating renewable marine power, yet, so far, ambitious schemes have been ignoredOn the stunning and craggy coastline of Holy Island in north Wales, work has started on a construction project to generate energy from one of the world’s greatest untapped energy resources: tidal power.The Morlais project, on the small island off the west of Anglesey has benefited from £31m in what is likely to be the last large grant for Wales from the European Union’s regional funding programme. It will install turbines at what will be one of the largest tidal stream energy sites in the world, covering 13 square miles of the seabed. Continue reading...
For older people, the internet plays on the part which is in all of us, that is alone and unknown, says Philippa PerryThe question As a retired woman living alone, I felt isolated during the various lockdowns. The answer seemed to be to rely on technology, which was fine when it worked, but it often made me feel more cut off from the world. For example, when I didn’t know how to unmute myself on a video call it was like having locked-in syndrome. Emerging from the pandemic, things are better, except Covid has made technology the way forward and I can’t always get it to work for me.I’ve been to a pub where I had to forgo lunch because I couldn’t order on the app. I know people who have gone abroad for holidays, but I’ve been too scared to go because of the passenger locator form, which you had to complete online while out of the country (how?). I have a mobile phone I often struggle with – for months I didn’t know how to answer a call, so I had to wait for people to ring off, then I had to call them back. Continue reading...
After losing a record $230bn in market value due to a disappointing earnings report in February, analysts are hoping to see progressMeta experienced a historic nosedive in value earlier this year amid a major rebrand and shake-ups to its business model – and investors are bracing for another difficult quarter.Meta lost a record $230bn in market value after a disappointing earnings report in February, in which it revealed Facebook had recorded its first-ever drop in daily user numbers. Continue reading...
Billionaires like Musk use their vast wealth to build a world unconstrained by laws, shareholders or accountabilityElon Musk has now put together a $46.5bn financing package to buy Twitter – two thirds of it from his own assets, and a third from bank loans secured against Twitter’s assets. It’s the biggest acquisition financing ever put forward for one person.Twitter’s founder and top managers don’t want Musk to take over the company. They offered him a seat on the board but he didn’t want it because he’d have to be responsible to all other shareholders. Now they’re adopting a “poison pill” to stop him. But Musk plans to buy shares directly with a tender offer that shareholders can’t refuse. After all, it’s a free market.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...
The platform has been a source of a growing wave of climate misinformation and said denialism ‘shouldn’t be monetized’Twitter chose Earth Day to announce it will ban advertisements that deny the scientific consensus on climate crisis.“We believe that climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis,” the company declared on Friday. Continue reading...
Electric vehicle maker Arrival is gambling that small sites, a ‘Lego-block’ manufacturing system and lots of robots will bring it successThe last year has been tricky for electric vehicle startups. After a burst of investment mania in which companies raised billions on the mere promise of battery propulsion, valuations have come back down to earth.One of the loudest thuds has come from Arrival, the closest to what could be called a British electric vehicle champion. Its market value on the Nasdaq has fallen from $15bn (£11.6bn) in March 2021, when it first completed a merger with a listed cash shell, to about $1.75bn. Continue reading...
The London-based photographer on his serendipitous avian encounter when capturing a plane and a fleeting rainbowPhotographer Josh Edgoose has always tried to capture “moments that feel a bit strange”. Until recently, photography was a hobby, and when lockdown first hit, he was limited to the area surrounding his home in Hounslow, London, for inspiration.“We live under a flight path, so planes go by every 10 minutes or so,” Edgoose says. “This beautiful rainbow appeared and I went out hoping to capture it as one flew over. I knew I had only two or three shots before the rainbow faded. The bird was complete luck. There is even another one peeking out from behind the chimney pot.” Continue reading...
A class-action lawsuit brought by users, including church groups, states they were bombarded with abusive messages and imageryThe Covid-19 pandemic brought on a surge of “zoom-bombing” as hackers and pranksters crashed into virtual meetings with abusive messages and imagery. Now, Zoom has agreed to a “historic” payout of $85m as part of a class-action settlement brought by its users, including church groups who said they were left traumatized by the disruptions.As part of the settlement agreement, Zoom Video Communications, the company behind the teleconference application that grew popular during the pandemic, will pay the $85m to users in cash compensation and also implement reforms to its business practices. Continue reading...
The Daily Mail dropped two stories detailing Activision’s Bobby Kotich’s abuse of an ex after threats by Meta executive, WSJ reportsSheryl Sandberg, the Meta executive, allegedly pressured the Daily Mail to drop unflattering stories about her then-boyfriend Bobby Kotick, the Activision Blizzard CEO, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.The Journal reports that she persuaded the digital edition of the Mail not to run stories revealing that an ex-girlfriend of Kotick had obtained a temporary restraining order against him in 2014. Kotick reportedly said that Sandberg, who he dated for three years until 2019, told the Mail in 2016 that if the article were published, it could damage the outlet’s relationship with Facebook. Sandberg allegedly contacted the Daily Mail in 2016 and 2019 to put a stop to the articles, and both times the stories never ran. Continue reading...
Time-lapse satellite images show glacial retreat at Mount Kilimanjaro, Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching, deforestation in Germany and Greenland glacial meltGoogle is marking Earth Day with time-lapse satellite images showing melting glaciers, retreating snow cover, deforestation and coral bleaching to remind its users about humanity’s impact on the climate and environment.The 2022 Earth Day Google doodle includes four Gifs created from satellite imagery and photographs from The Ocean Agency that will rotate throughout the day. Continue reading...
In a keynote address at Stanford University, the former president made his most extensive remarks yet about the tech landscapeTechnology companies must be reined in to address the “weakening of democratic institutions around the world”, Barack Obama said Thursday, in a sweeping keynote speech on the perils of disinformation.Speaking at Stanford University in Silicon Valley, the former president made his most extensive remarks yet about the technology landscape, which he said is “turbo-charging some of humanity’s worst impulses”. Continue reading...
Tesla CEO is putting $21bn of his own money in the package, according to US watchdog filingElon Musk has secured $46.5bn (£35.6bn) in financing to fund a possible hostile bid for Twitter and is putting up $21bn of his own money as part of the package.On top of that equity, Musk is raising a further $12.5bn for the offer via a margin loan secured against his shares in Tesla, the electric carmaker that he runs as CEO. Morgan Stanley, the US investment bank, is leading a group of financial institutions providing $13bn in debt financing. Continue reading...
by Alexi Duggins, Hannah Verdier, Hollie Richardson a on (#5YCZS)
In this week’s newsletter: an American nurse sent anti-vaxxers into a frenzy after fainting on TV after her vaccine – NBC’s Brandy Zadrozny finds out why. Plus: five podcasts to help you find love
Electric car company reports $18.8bn in revenue for the first quarter, up 81% from a year beforeTesla smashed Wall Street estimates for revenue and profit in another record quarter on Wednesday, despite a tumultuous few months for its CEO, Elon Musk, and ongoing supply chain concerns.The electric car manufacturer reported $18.8bn in revenue for Q1 of 2022, up 81% from a year earlier. The report beat analyst expectations of $17.8bn, sending Tesla shares up 4% in after-hours trading. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian