Investigation reveals more than 150 fake firms, many with ties to China, are targeting people online, breaking their hearts – and emptying their bank accountsA woman meets a man online. They flirt. Then, after a few weeks, they begin imagining a future together. Fast forward a few months and one of them has had their heart broken and been defrauded of their life savings.It sounds like a classic romance scam, but it isn’t. This is “pig butchering”: a brutal, elaborate and rapidly expanding form of organised crime, often involving criminal syndicates, modern-day slaves and victims around the world. Continue reading...
The economic downturn, US lawsuits and the fear of rising tech rivals could be reasons for the firm’s “code red” alert, but it still has an AI ace up its sleeveIn a strange way, the best thing that could have happened to Google (now masquerading as Alphabet, its parent company) was Facebook. Why? Because although Google invented surveillance capitalism, arguably the most toxic business model since the opium trade, it was Facebook that got into the most trouble for its abuses of it. The result was that Google enjoyed an easier ride. Naturally, it had the odd bit of unpleasantness with the EU, with annoying fines and long drawn out legal wrangles. But it was the Facebook boss, Mark Zuckerberg – not Google’s Larry Page, Sergey Brin and their adult supervisor Eric Schmidt – who was awarded the title of evil emperor of the online world.This sometimes enabled Google to fly below the regulatory radar and avoid public criticism. Its relative immunity may also have been fostered by credulity induced by its “Don’t be evil” motto. What may also have helped is the way that, over the years, it fumbled quite a few things – Google+, Google Wave, Google Glass, Knol and Google Reader, to name just five. On the other hand, it also managed to create useful and successful products – Gmail, for example, plus Google Maps, Google Scholar, Google Earth and Google Books. And, of course, it made inspired acquisitions of YouTube in 2006 and of artificial intelligence startup DeepMind in 2014. Continue reading...
The photo-sharing app leads to some pretty random images – and with them unexpected but useful style lessonsThe social media platform BeReal, in which users take a photo during a random two-minute period every day, is not an obvious place to look for style inspiration. Unlike Instagram, which is full of selfies taken specifically to show off a new coat, a good hair day or a flattering lift mirror, BeReal shows everyone at their most humdrum. If Instagram is a glossy, coffee table book compilation of high days and holidays, Be Real is a blooper reel of life’s tea-bath-bed days.If you are on the app, you get a notification to take a picture of what you are doing at a random time of day – and the reverse camera snaps a selfie while you are doing it. It means you are much more likely to be in the park in your dog-walking coat or sitting at your laptop in an old hoodie than you are to be dolled up. Continue reading...
Subtitles aren’t just for the hard of hearing, with Netflix reporting 40% of its viewers regularly use them. But do we just enjoy them or is there a more annoying reason?There’s a reason Bradley Johnston watches “literally everything” with subtitles on. It’s not an accessibility issue – the 25-year-old is a native English speaker and isn’t hard of hearing. He is “the kind of TV viewer that just doesn’t want to work for it”.“Like, if there’s a subtle moment some people might miss that’s integral to the plot, let me know about it,” he says. Continue reading...
The N64 shooter was one of the most innovative games in history – and the myths around its creation still intrigueLife moves pretty slow on a video game magazine when the last pages are being sent to the printer. As a writer on Edge, I’d have to be available in the office to write captions and headlines, but often we were there long into the night as the art team designed pages. So the writers and subs would have nothing to do but wait and play games. And for many months, the game we played was GoldenEye.Released two years after the film, into a market where tie-ins were never exactly epoch-making products, it’s fair to say expectations were low for the N64 shooter. But this was a shooter by Rare, the veteran Midlands-based developer of Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct, and the game that would introduce a lot of players to the concept of using an analogue stick to look around in a 3D game – it’s difficult to overstate how important that was. Continue reading...
I really did have more time on my hands when I quit addictive online platforms. But I missed connecting with friends and discovering unexpected inspirationA year into the pandemic, in early 2021, I was spending most of my time online. I sat and I scrolled – on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – letting the latest horrifying news wash over me, or watching videos of cute animals, or messaging bored friends about our mutual states of crisis.The more I scrolled, the more all-consuming it became. I found myself instinctively reaching for my phone whenever I could. I would write a paragraph of a piece with a tight deadline, then have a browse on Twitter as a treat. I would watch TV and simultaneously check Instagram during scenes that lost my attention; even in bed, I would scroll to get to sleep and wake up to my phone’s blue light. Continue reading...
by Presented by Ian Sample with John Naughton, produc on (#6871J)
ChatGPT has been causing a stir since its launch last year. The chatbot’s ability to produce convincing essays, stories and even song lyrics has impressed users, and this week attracted a multibillion-dollar investment from Microsoft. Ian Sample speaks to Prof John Naughton about how ChatGPT works, hears from author Patrick Jackson about how it will change publishing, and asks where the technology could end upAfter launching in November, ChatGPT became an immediate hit that has both entertained and alarmed its users. Given a command or question, the chatbot is able to return convincing essays, simple recipes and even life advice in a matter of seconds. This impressive feat is performed by a large language model that lies behind its interface. Using a staggering amount of text drawn from the internet, the model builds up words and sentences based on statistical probability. It’s been described as a vastly scaled-up version of predictive text messaging. The result is a technology that has attracted a multibillion-dollar investment from Microsoft, and got many wondering how viable their jobs might soon become.Ian Sample speaks to the Observer columnist Prof John Naughton about how ChatGPT works and what could be next for this technology, and hears from the children’s author Patrick Jackson on how he plans to use it and why he’s enthusiastic about how it could change his work Continue reading...
The extreme features of the Rezvani Vengeance – including electrified door handles and blinding strobe lights – are wholly in tune with lethal trends in the US market Continue reading...
In this week’s newsletter: For 45 years, the sci-fi series has influenced the visual and narrative language of countless games, not just films – and shows no signs of slowing down
CEO of electric carmaker says finance was ‘not an issue’ but he did not have binding commitments from investorsElon Musk expected strong financial support when he tweeted that he would take Tesla private in 2018, but lacked specific commitments from potential backers, according to testimony he gave on his third day of questioning in a San Francisco federal court.Musk is accused of defrauding investors by driving up the price of Tesla stock by tweeting on 7 August 2018 that he had “funding secured” to take the electric carmaker private. Continue reading...
by Joe Middleton , Kari Paul and agencies on (#684NN)
Social media platform abandoned its offices near Piccadilly Circus after Elon Musk takeover, and was evicted from Singapore officeTwitter is being sued by landlords in San Francisco and London after failing to pay rent on its offices, as new owner Elon Musk takes on extreme cost-cutting strategies that reportedly include simply not paying the bills.The crown estate in London, which manages property belonging to King Charles III, filed a claim against Twitter in the high court in the UK capital last week. The alleged rental arrears relate to office space near Piccadilly Circus in central London, according to the BBC. Continue reading...
In this week’s newsletter: American universities and legislators are blocking access to the China-owned app over privacy concerns – but fans say the choice should be theirs
While the fraudsters I’ve encountered are often cunning, sooner or later they get carried awayFTX’s HQ, we now know, was not your typical one. CEO Sam Bankman-Fried ran his business from a $40m Bahamian penthouse named the Orchid, complete with Venetian plaster walls and a grand piano. The lot was nestled beside a championship golf course and a mega-yacht marina. Since Amazon doesn’t deliver to the Bahamas, private jets did the job instead.It wasn’t your typical corporate HQ – but then, FTX is not your typical corporation. It’s bankrupt, dragged down by its own financial abuses, with its chief executive facing prison. Yet while FTX has made headlines, its tale is not as unusual as you might think. Continue reading...
Company says deal with OpenAI will involve deploying artificial intelligence technology across its productsMicrosoft has announced a deepening of its partnership with the company behind the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT by announcing a multibillion dollar investment in the business.It said the deal with OpenAI would involve deploying the company’s artificial intelligence models across Microsoft products, which include the Bing search engine and its office software such as Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. Continue reading...
Popular role-playing game is being cut off due to a dispute between US developer and its Chinese partnerMillions of Chinese players of the roleplaying epic World of Warcraft (WoW) will bid a sad farewell to the land of Azeroth, with the game set to go offline after a dispute between the US developer Blizzard and its local partner NetEase.Massively popular worldwide, particularly in the 2000s, WoW is an online multiplayer role-playing game set in a fantasy medieval world. It is known for being immersive and addictive, and players can rack up hundreds of hours of game time. Continue reading...
US investment group typically buys stakes in underperforming firms and seeks changes to way they are runThe US activist investor firm Elliott Investment Management has taken a multibillion-dollar stake in Salesforce, the business software company that owns the Slack messaging platform.Elliott, which typically buys stakes in underperforming companies and seeks changes to the way they are run, said it was looking forward to working “constructively” with the San Francisco-based company, without revealing any strategic proposals. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#683B4)
Faster and easier to repair, the Intel version is best yet. But the Arm model isn’t ready for prime timeMicrosoft’s latest Windows 11 tablet gets faster and easier to fix in the Surface Pro 9, while offering more options than ever before. But is it still the best PC tablet going? Only if you pick the right one.Microsoft has brought its two high-end tablet lines under one model name. The standard Surface Pro 9 costs from £1,099 ($999.99/A$1,649) without a keyboard and continues where the Surface Pro 8 left off in 2021, fitted with new faster 12th-generation Intel Core i5 and i7 chips and an improved internal design.Screen: 13in LCD 2880x1920 (267 PPI) 120HzProcessor: Intel Core i5 or i7 (12th generation)RAM: 8, 16 or 32GBStorage: 128, 256, 512GB or 1TBGraphics: Intel Iris XeOperating system: Windows 11 HomeCamera: 10MP rear, 5MP front-facing, Windows HelloConnectivity: Wifi 6E, Bluetooth 5.1, 2x Thunderbolt 4/USB-4, Surface ConnectDimensions: 287 x 209 x 9.3 mmWeight: 879g (without keyboard) Continue reading...
AI art generators may provide five minutes of fun for most users, but the blurring of creative and ethical boundaries is leaving many artists raging against the machine‘Woman reading book, under a night sky, dreamy atmosphere,” I type into Deep Dream Generator’s Text 2 Dream feature. In less than a minute, an image is returned to me showing what I’ve described. Welcome to the world of AI image generation, where you can create what on the surface looks like top-notch artwork using just a few text prompts, even if in reality your skills don’t go beyond drawing stick figures.AI image generation seems to be everywhere: on TikTok, the popular AI Manga filter shows you what you look like in the Japanese comic style, while people in their droves are using it to create images for everything from company logos to picture books. It’s already been used by one major publisher: sci-fi imprint Tor discovered that a cover it had created had used a licensed image created by AI, but decided to go ahead anyway “due to production constraints”. Continue reading...
Social media platform faces $300m interest payment this week, and default could trigger debt restructuring – or bankruptcyElon Musk sold a statue of Twitter’s bird logo last week for $100,000 – and he needs the money. The social media platform that he owns reportedly faces an interest payment of about $300m (£242m) on its debt as soon as this week, amid difficult financial conditions for the company.Twitter has been a loss-making business, even in the good times, but its problems have worsened since it was bought by the Tesla chief executive less than three months ago. Musk himself has raised the spectre of Twitter entering chapter 11 bankruptcy, although he has since played that prospect down. How much trouble is Twitter in, months after it was bought by the world’s second richest man? Continue reading...
In Coventry, 300 GMB members plan to down tools over long hours, bad management and a 50p-an-hour pay riseAmazon workers at a vast depot in Coventry will stage a historic strike on Wednesday – the first time the delivery giant’s UK operations have ever been hit by industrial action.The immediate cause of the dispute was a 50p-an-hour pay rise offered to warehouse staff in the summer, which many felt was insulting – particularly after they had worked throughout the Covid pandemic. Continue reading...
Sensationalist headlines and reactionary calls for stricter moderation risk missing the forest for the treesIs there any platform that creates as much collective angst as TikTok?For some, TikTok is just a silly video app. For others, it’s a symbol of our most potent social and political fears. What are young people engaging with? Isn’t it collecting a huge amount of data? Are they being dragged down dangerous rabbit holes? And is China spying on them? Continue reading...
The carmaker co-founder said Twitter was the most democratic way to communicate but tweets didn’t affect stock as he expectedElon Musk testified on Friday as part of a trial over a 2018 tweet in which he claimed to have “funding secured” to take Tesla private, a tweet that shareholders allege cost them millions in trading losses.The Tesla CEO appeared in a San Francisco federal courtroom and defended himself by saying that “just because I tweet something does not mean people believe it or will act accordingly”. Continue reading...
Startup that hoped to transform UK car production was once valued at more than £800m, but collapsed worth a tiny fraction of thatWhen Britishvolt, a startup hoping to transform UK car production by making batteries for electric vehicles, rented a seven-bedroom £2.8m mansion with a swimming pool and Jacuzzi-style bath for workers, some employees were uncomfortable with the impression it gave of lavish spending.Founded in 2019, Britishvolt began with grand ambitions – hailed by the then prime minister, Boris Johnson – to become the first domestically owned battery factory in a car industry that employs tens of thousands of British workers, but where the big manufacturers are all overseas companies. The planned factory would have been able to supply 30 gigawatt hours (GWh) of batteries a year, enough for hundreds of thousands of cars. Continue reading...
Bosses at Davos say direct messaging can be more effective for Gen Z employees – but email still has a roleCould office emails go the way of the fax machine and the rolodex? They have not joined those workplace dinosaurs yet, but there were signs of evolutionary change at the annual gathering of business leaders in Davos this week, where tech bosses said emails were becoming outdated.The chief executive of the IT firm Wipro, which employs 260,000 people worldwide, said about 10% of his staff “don’t even check one email per month” and that he used Instagram and LinkedIn to talk to staff. Continue reading...
Company is latest large US tech player to announce sweeping job losses as global outlook weakensGoogle’s parent company is to cut 12,000 jobs worldwide as it becomes the latest large US tech firm to reduce its workforce after a pandemic-related hiring boom.Alphabet’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, said the redundancies followed a “rigorous review” of the business. The cuts come days after Microsoft said it would cut 10,000 jobs, citing a shift in digital spending habits and weakness in the global economy. Continue reading...
Uber files project revealed that company identified Emmanuel Macron as key allyUber’s lobbying activities in France and its relationship with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, are facing an official inquiry following an investigation led by the Guardian last year.A committee of French MPs will now investigate the ride-hailing company’s relationships with public officials, including with Macron, after journalists revealed extensive lobbying of politicians by the company. Continue reading...
Firm is latest casualty in sector as cryptocurrencies contagion spreads after FTX collapseThe cryptocurrency lender Genesis has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US, becoming the latest victim of the shakeout in the digital asset market after the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX.Genesis Global Capital, one of three Genesis entities that applied for bankruptcy protection on Thursday, froze customer withdrawals on 16 November, days after FTX made its own Chapter 11 filing.
Experts say banning the app over college networks will not stop students from accessing it over cellular dataThere’s a new frontline opening up in the US war on TikTok: college campuses.The China-based app has already been banned on all federal government devices and on government devices in 31 states over data privacy concerns. Now restrictions are spreading to universities, with the Auburn University, University of Oklahoma, Texas A&M and others all blocking the platform from school wifi networks in recent weeks. Continue reading...
Hastings will be succeeded by co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos, and will continue in the company as executive chairmanNetflix co-founder Reed Hastings, the entrepreneur who reshaped the media landscape and led the charge into streaming, announced he is stepping down as co-chief executive of the company on Thursday.Hastings, 62, co-founded the company in 1997 when Netflix delivered its subscribers movies on DVDs sent in the mail, will become chairman. Greg Peters, the company’s chief product and chief operating officer, will join Ted Sarandos, chief content officer, as a co-chief executive. Sarandos was elevated to co-CEO in July 2020. Continue reading...
The horror sequences are more vivid, the storytelling explores new worlds and it turns a familiar tale into something that grips you all over again. It’s the dream video game adaptationWhen it comes to video-game adaptations, TV and film producers have historically had an unfortunate habit of using the game as a kind of Mad Libs prompt for something completely unrelated. Characters you’ve spent 30 hours getting to know in a game might remain in name and appearance only, given personality transplants to fit into new, incongruous plots. There has been an endemic lack of respect for video games from decades’ worth of film-makers who, in the words of games satire site Hard Drive News, have been excited to take a beloved franchise and adapt it into something not for dumb little babies.HBO’s The Last of Us finally marks the end of this era. There’s been a shift in the tenor of game adaptations in the past few years; you could tell that Detective Pikachu was written by huge Pokémon fans, Cyberpunk 2077’s Netflix series was actually better than the game, and the plot of Paramount’s TV version of the military space-opera Halo is just as ponderous and self-important as the games. But the close involvement of The Last of Us co-creator Neil Druckmann in the TV series takes HBO’s adaptation to another level. The Last of Us doesn’t just preserve the premise and characters of the game; it tells us something new about them. Continue reading...
UK entrepreneur says economic strategy has left Britain in a ‘Covid inertia’ and calls for growth planSir James Dyson, the billionaire businessperson, has launched a withering attack on Rishi Sunak’s government, saying its “shortsighted” and “stupid” economic policies have left the country in a state of “Covid inertia”.The founder of the eponymous vacuum cleaner firm said “growth has become a dirty word” under the current leadership and that on current trends, the average British family will be poorer than their Polish counterpart by 2030. Continue reading...
It has introduced facial recognition, but does not recognise meNatWest recently introduced biometric approval on its app for transactions such as payments to a new account. It requires customers to look into the phone and blink (presumably to show we’re alive and not corpses propped up in front of the camera by some fraudster). And, in my experience, it hardly ever works. I’ve just sat here for four minutes, blinking like an idiot with the app telling me to move the camera closer until it’s virtually up my nose, until the approval time expired. This has been my repeated experience. Very annoying. But from a quick browse online I see I’m not alone.
Highlights of the sale following Elon Musk’s chaotic takeover of the company include kegerators and a planterWhat do you get the tech fan who has everything? Perhaps a statue of Twitter’s bright-blue logo, for a mere $100,000.That’s what the priciest item went for at an auction of the company’s office supplies, according to the BBC. The sale marks the latest episode in the continuing saga of Elon Musk’s $44bn takeover of the company, which has generated seemingly endless chaos – from sudden policy changes to the elimination of thousands of jobs.A 10ft tall neon Twitter sign, perhaps a nice companion piece to the statue, sold for a mere $40,000.A 6ft tall planter in the shape of the @ symbol – which is, of course, an icon of the platform – closed at $15,500, according to SFGate.A conference table made from reclaimed wood closed at nearly $10,500.A fancy espresso machine from La Marzocco went for about $13,500 – less than half its retail value – while an Eames chair apparently saw added value thanks to its Twitter associations. Normally, it would go for $1,195, but Twitter’s chair went for at least $1,400, as a company engineer pointed out. Continue reading...
Everyone from awkward boyfriends to supposedly nefarious fiances are being held to account. The jurors? A million deranged zoomersIf I was a more dedicated podcast listener, I am certain I would be a nutter for true crime, a genre with which I share many core values: a zeal for prying into the lives of total strangers, a generally melodramatic way of talking, an overactive imagination which crafts grand, paranoid narratives from the most quotidian of events. (These are also the traits of anyone who did theatre in high school.)TikTok, apparently, agrees. When Serial exploded the genre in 2014, the power of amateur sleuths – and the sway they possessed over the real-world results of justice – was still a novelty. Now, nearly a decade on, new mysteries sweep through TikTok at dizzying pace. Everyone from awkward boyfriends to supposedly nefarious fiances are held to account on the platform by users conducting their own frenzied investigations, hoping to catch their suspects cheating, philandering and premeditating. The jurors: a million deranged zoomers. The tone: nothing short of fever pitch – the type that accompanies all good conspiracy theories. Continue reading...
Tesla investor seeks ‘billions’ in damages on behalf of those who traded stock after Musk posted plan to take company privateElon Musk could end up taking the stand as early as Friday in the ongoing San Francisco trial alleging that he deceptively drove up the price of Tesla Motors’ stock by tweeting about a plan to take the carmaker private, which never came to pass.As arguments began on Wednesday, the attorney for a group of shareholders charged that Elon Musk “lied” when he tweeted in 2018 that he had “secured” funding to take Tesla private. The case seeks to hold the firm’s CEO responsible for “billions” investors say they lost after the claim drove up the share price. Continue reading...
Prosecutors allege Anatoly Legkodymov’s company became a ‘safe haven’ for proceeds of criminal activityA Russian national who founded a cryptocurrency exchange that the justice department says became a haven for the proceeds of criminal activity has been arrested, federal officials said on Wednesday.Anatoly Legkodymov, who lives in China, was arrested on Tuesday night in Miami and was due in court on a charge of conducting an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Continue reading...
The HBO version of the post-apocalyptic has had rave reviews. From Silent Hill to Broken Sword, here are others that could really shine on the small screen
Internet dating can feel soul-destroying, unnerving and transactional. Couples explain how their love lives were transformed when they finally stopped swipingWhen Georgie Thorogood’s date made a sleazy joke about “horsey girls carrying whips”, she knew it was time to make a hasty exit. After meeting Tom through a dating app in the summer of 2021, she had been hoping for some polite conversation over a few drinks, maybe some romantic chemistry if she was lucky. What she got was a two-hour rant about his ex-wife and some creepy innuendo. “I knew straight away he wasn’t for me. I politely told him I didn’t want to see him again, but he took the rejection really badly. I work in music communications and at the time I was setting up a festival. He started getting aggressive and telling me that I was destined to fail,” she says. “I don’t know how he could possibly know that, as he didn’t ask me a single question about myself all night.”Her bad experience, which came after months of mindless swiping, was the final straw for Georgie, 40. “Not only did I find dating apps soul-destroying, I was also happy with my single life, so I decided to quit them completely and focus on that instead,” she says. “I found so many of the men on apps had serious issues, too. Another guy became abusive when I turned down an offer to meet for a walk in a remote location because it didn’t feel safe. You never know who people are online.” While Georgie acknowledges that people with emotional baggage aren’t exclusive to dating sites, she feels the apps give them a chance to hide their bad behaviour. “The problem is that you don’t have to reflect or make changes when something goes wrong – you can just swipe to the next person.” Continue reading...
Meta’s advisory board says policy impedes right to expression for women and trans and nonbinary peopleFacebook and Instagram’s parent company could soon free the nipple. More than a decade after breastfeeding mothers first held a “nurse-in” at Facebook’s headquarters to protest against its ban on breasts, Meta’s oversight board has called for an overhaul to the company’s rules banning bare-chested images of women – but not men.In a decision dated 17 January, the oversight board – a group of academics, politicians, and journalists who advise the company on its content-moderation policies – recommended that Meta change its adult nudity and sexual activity community standard “so that it is governed by clear criteria that respect international human rights standards”. Continue reading...
Video from 2016 was promoted by Elon Musk as evidence that ‘Tesla drives itself’A 2016 video that Tesla used to promote its self-driving technology was staged to show capabilities like stopping at a red light and accelerating at a green light that the system did not have, according to testimony by a senior engineer.The video, which remains archived on Tesla’s website, was released in October 2016 and promoted on Twitter by Elon Musk as evidence that “Tesla drives itself”. Continue reading...
Afghanistan’s hardline Islamist rulers had never carried a verification tick mark before the launch of Twitter BlueTwitter account verifications bought by the Taliban appear to have been removed, after many expressed outrage that the social media platform had given its blue check marks to Afghanistan’s hardline Islamist rulers.Twitter previously only gave blue “verified” check marks to accounts that were considered “active, notable and authentic accounts of public interest”. But since Elon Musk acquired the platform last year, users can buy them from the Twitter Blue service for a fee – an option at least two officials of the Taliban government in Afghanistan had exercised. Continue reading...
The Swedish-based electric carmaker has pulled ahead of rivals thanks to its no-factory model and Chinese partner, but its boss want to remove carbon from the production process too“I was never ever that car guy who was interested in designing a Ferrari,” says Thomas Ingenlath. It’s a surprising thing to hear from a former designer for Audi, Skoda and Volvo. It makes more sense for the chief executive of an electric car startup, Polestar, launched in 2017 as a subsidiary brand of Volvo.Ingenlath’s design ideals stretch way beyond car marques to include Apple products and high-end sports clothing. Continue reading...
In this week’s newsletter: The government’s proposed legislation seeks to keep children safe from harmful content and hold tech CEOs accountable. Can it?
This desperately moving drama set in a zombie-ravaged US is a phenomenal blend of horror and heart, with a cast that could not be more perfect• The Last of Us recap episode one – welcome to the mushroom apocalypse! What if it wasn’t a flu-like virus that threatened the existence of humankind, but a parasitic fungus that used rising temperatures to evolve and switch hosts, from ants to humans? That is the terrifying premise of The Last of Us, another post-apocalyptic prestige drama in a TV landscape that, for understandable reasons, is stuffed with game-over scenarios. While its zombie skeleton brings immediate comparisons to The Walking Dead, its beating heart is more in line with last year’s Station Eleven, with which it shares a surprisingly steady and meditative pace.Much has been made of its origins as a video game, in part because the source material looked as if it might offer the best chance yet of a convincing transition from console to screen. The series was adapted by the game’s creator, Neil Druckmann, and Chernobyl’s showrunner, Craig Mazin, a combination that suggested it might buck the trend of video games reworked into another format. (Thirty years on, the Super Mario Bros film is still cited as a cautionary tale.)The Last of Us is on Sky Atlantic and Now in the UK, HBO in the US and Binge and Foxtel in Australia. Continue reading...
Ian Russell says inquest into daughter’s death is ‘unique’ opportunity to make online platforms saferMolly Russell’s father has called for a stronger UK online safety bill, including criminal sanctions for tech executives who endanger children’s wellbeing, after criticising social media platforms’ responses to a coroner’s report on his daughter’s death.Ian Russell said the inquest into the death of Molly, 14, was a “unique” opportunity for the tech industry and government to make online platforms safer. A coroner ruled in September that harmful online content contributed to the death of Molly, stating that she “died from an act of self-harm whilst suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content”. Continue reading...
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington on (#67V4Y)
Court documents reveal reasons for Awad Al-Qarni’s arrest – even though rulers are major investors in social media platformsA prominent pro-reform law professor in Saudi Arabia is facing the death penalty for alleged crimes including having a Twitter account and using WhatsApp to share news considered “hostile” to the kingdom, according to court documents seen by the Guardian.The arrest of Awad Al-Qarni, 65, in September 2017 represented the start of a crackdown against dissent by the then newly named crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Continue reading...
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