Technology | The Guardian

Crypto self-destructed (twice) and Twitter got a new, CEO-shaped main character– but what else happened this year?Happy Betwixtmas to those who celebrate, and mournful “sorry everything fun is shut” to those who don’t. Me? I’m thankful for the one week of the year where tech news stops – or at least, slows down. (This is written in advance and I’ve got a lot riding on that sentence still being true by the time you read it).It’s been an odd year. Even by the standards of the sector, it was just extraordinarily silly. Crypto collapsed in the dumbest possible way, twice. Elon Musk bought his way into being the main character of Twitter, for good. AI seems just on the precipice of doing away with the Ucas personal statement. Nothing is normal.Standing for “decentralised autonomous organisation”, a DAO isn’t really in the same class as an NFT. Rather than being a singular digital asset, like a picture of a monkey or a dog-themed copy of a dog-themed copy of bitcoin, a DAO is more like a company – but one which is directly controlled by its shareholders, without the need for employees or directors.(Although, we should note, a DAO is Not A Company and owners of DAOs are Not Shareholders, because if it were and they were, the whole thing would be wildly illegal. Glad we’ve cleared that up.)Given what we know and expect from Russia, it’s unlikely to come as a shock that – according to data from Checkpoint Research – in the first three days of combat, cyber-attacks on Ukraine’s government and military sector went up by 196%, compared to the rest of February.But what has been interesting to watch has been the fightback, with attacks on Russia up 4% for the week. It might not sound like much, but there has been noticeable pushback from white hat hackers, hactivist groups and others on the counterattack.What happened was unexpected. Upon proving that I was the real Alex Hern, I was greeted with a wall of glee. One user spammed the phrase “YOUNG_HERN_IN_THE_HOUSE”, another posted “ITS_FUCKING_ALEX”. “ALEX NEXT ELON”, “ALEX SAVE OUR BAGS”… before I could even post my first real message, someone had sent “ALEX TYPING” 15 times. Where my first appearance had felt like a parent breaking up an illicit house party, this felt more like the second coming, with me unwillingly cast in the role of Jesus.Things got worse when I said I wanted to speak to people for a story about it. No matter how explicit I was that I thought the entire thing was dumb as hell – dumber than I thought was possible for an already extremely-dumb sector – news of a forthcoming article spread like wildfire. “All publicity is good publicity,” was spammed into the channel, with one user pointing out that Shiba Inu, a shitcoin worth an inexplicable $7bn, had had a very similar genesis, with the majority of its early press simply mocking it as a low-effort clone of the original shitcoin, Dogecoin.[Elizabeth Lagone], the head of health and wellbeing policy at Mark Zuckerberg’s company was taken through a selection of the Instagram posts the teenager had viewed in the six months before her death – deeming many of them to be “safe” for children to view. It was not an opinion shared by many in the room at north London coroner’s court.Molly, from north-west London, died in 2017 after viewing extensive amounts of online content related to suicide, depression, self-harm and anxiety. In what the NSPCC described as a global first, the senior coroner said social media had contributed to Molly’s death, ruling that that Molly had died from “an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content”. Continue reading...

It’s been a bad year for delusional egomaniacs in Silicon Valley. But who had it worst?It’s been a pretty good few decades for America’s top tech CEOs, as their supposed brilliance turned them into billionaire oligarchs with cultlike followings. But in 2022, things suddenly looked a bit bleaker.Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Jeff Bezos’s Amazon reportedly cut thousands of workers. Elon Musk, once hailed as a genius, has revealed a truly impressive level of incompetence at Twitter. Elizabeth Holmes was sentenced to more than a decade in prison. And then there’s Sam Bankman-Fried, who recently became a household name for disastrous reasons. Continue reading...

Move follows criticism of Elon Musk after #ThereIsHelp feature disappeared from searchesTwitter has restored a feature that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and support groups after its CEO Elon Musk was criticised over their removal.The feature, known as #ThereIsHelp, placed a banner at the top of search results for certain topics and listed contacts for organisations in numerous countries related to mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, Covid-19, gender-based violence, natural disasters and freedom of expression. Continue reading...

The Little Car Company, housed in a converted RAF base at Bicester, makes miniature classics that run on batteriesBuilding cars is hard, so when Ben Hedley started his business he started small. To be precise, he started at 75% of the size. The Little Car Company does what its name suggests, producing shrunken but drivable battery electric toy versions of full-size classics from the likes of Aston Martin and Ferrari.The company has made its way to £10m in turnover and 60 employees almost by accident over four years, Hedley says, walking around the company’s workshop in Bicester Heritage, a converted Royal Air Force base in Oxfordshire that has been turned into a hub for classic car businesses. The company made its first profits in the last financial quarter, despite supply chain problems that have hit automotive manufacturers big and small. Continue reading...

How the Ukraine-born photographer, on a hot day by a pool in San Francisco, came to snap Santa socksPasha Francuz was born in Chernivtsi, in western Ukraine, but left eight years ago, living in Poland and Italy before settling near San Francisco with his wife and teenage daughter.“A friend in Kyiv, Oleg, is a fashion designer, and sent me a few pairs of his socks to take some marketing shots of. It was one of the hottest days of the year, so I was down by our apartment complex’s pool with my friend and neighbour Nick. We took a series of photos, then Nick jumped in the water and this shot happened,” Francuz says. Continue reading...

Sources say new owner sought removal of #ThereIsHelp feature that appeared at top of certain searchesTwitter has removed a feature in the past few days that promoted suicide prevention hotlines and other safety resources to users looking up certain content, according to two people familiar with the matter, who said it was ordered by new owner Elon Musk.The removal of the feature, known as #ThereIsHelp, has not been previously reported. It had shown at the top of specific searches contacts for support organisations in many countries related to mental health, HIV, vaccines, child sexual exploitation, Covid19, gender-based violence, natural disasters and freedom of expression. Continue reading...

Curry in Delhi | Elderly resilience | Jeremy Clarkson | Ransomware attack on the GuardianI have a clear recollection of eating chicken tikka masala in August 1971 in Delhi, India. It was with my parents in Kwality restaurant in the then Connaught Place area (Ali Ahmed Aslam, inventor of chicken tikka masala, dies at 77, theguardian.com, 21 December).

In this week’s newsletter: The cat games, 80s kung fu fighters, isometric RPGs and more that our readers loved

Chinese parent company, ByteDance says four employees, based in both US and China, have been firedTikTok has admitted that it used its own app to spy on reporters as part of an attempt to track down the journalists’ sources, according to an internal email.The data was accessed by employees of ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company and was used to track the reporters’ physical movements. The company’s chief internal auditor Chris Lepitak, who led the team involved in the operation, has been fired, while his China-based manager Song Ye has resigned. Continue reading...

Additional technology – and potential extension to factory – could help raise production to up to 1bn chocolates a yearShiny tanks of molten chocolate stand guard over a factory floor where three production lines squirt, chill and fill festive treats into existence.Production of Hotel Chocolat’s Christmas selection starts in June at its factory in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, and finishes several weeks before Christmas, when it switches to making Valentine’s Day and Easter delicacies. Continue reading...

FTX founder must remain under strict supervision at parents’ California home, judge saysThe fallen crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried was freed on $250m bail on Thursday, a day after agreeing to be extradited from the Bahamas.The 30-year-old faces eight charges connected to his role in the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX, which carry a maximum sentence of 110 years. Judge Gabriel Gorenstein said Bankman-Fried would have to remain under strict supervision at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California. Continue reading...

Run an arcade, oversee an archeological dig, kill people on rollerskates or play the trombone – our critics pick some deep cuts from the year in games

It your children have a new Xbox, Playstation or Nintendo Switch waiting under the tree, here is what you need to know about subscriptions, parental controls … and getting the most fun out of it for all the familyThe days of game consoles being ready for action as soon as they’re plugged in are long gone, I’m afraid. Whether you’ve gone for an Xbox, PlayStation or Switch, your machine will need time to download the latest firmware updates before you can play anything. Depending on your broadband connection this can take anything from one to eight hours, so if you’re a parent, you may want to think about how you’re going to keep everyone entertained until that’s done. If it’s not already beautifully wrapped, it may even be worth sneakily unpacking the console and doing this prep-work before Christmas morning. If you have a spare ethernet cable (or can nick one from your PC for a day), consider setting up your console with a wired connection to your router rather than over wifi – this usually gives you a faster, more reliable connection. Continue reading...

Layoffs have made a precarious situation for noncitizens even worse, forcing them to play a game of chance to stay in the USLess than a year ago, K was working with a US-based team at Amazon from one of the e-commerce giant’s many international outposts in east Asia. While the distance between himself and those on his team had made his role tricky, he was at a stable job, at a company in his home country where labor laws protected workers from layoffs and sudden terminations.To make it easier for him and his team to work together, Amazon offered him a role in the US and said it would sponsor his L visa – a temporary worker visa available to employees of US-based companies who transfer from an international office. Though that meant uprooting his family, including his children who did not speak English, K took the job, confident in the importance of his department, the Amazon’s devices team, to the company. Continue reading...

Carolyn Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, co-founder of FTX, said to be cooperating with investigatorsTwo associates of Sam Bankman-Fried have pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and are helping investigators with their inquiries.News of the charges, guilty pleas and the pair’s cooperation with the investigation was only announced once the FTX co-founder was on a plane to the US from the Bahamas after he agreed to voluntary extradition to answer to charges tied to his role in the exchange’s failure. The aircraft touched down in New York at 10pm local time. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: The new season of Queen of the Con tells the wild story of how the New York ‘rich girl’ stole $1m from the US government. Plus: five of the best documentary podcasts

Tesla shareholders hoping for the full attention of their distracted CEO are likely to be disappointedManagement by Twitter poll is such a silly idea that it remains hard to believe Elon Musk was being sincere when he invited the site’s users to determine if he should continue as chief executive. One suspects he had already decided to hire an executive to front the business – which is what, note, he told a Delaware court he would do several weeks ago. The poll merely created a buzz.In the unlikely event that users had voted to keep him as boss, Musk could have given roughly the same answer as the one he is giving now. In short, he will stay in charge for a while because a chief executive cannot be recruited overnight. Continue reading...

Elon Musk admits banning links to Twitter rival was a mistakeElon Musk’s chaotic autumn at Twitter has produced one clear winner: Mastodon, the open-source social network, has now grown to 2.5m users – triggering a land-grab for space on it from groups including browser makers, cryptocurrency advocates and other social networks.Despite the Twitter CEO’s best efforts to disparage the rival platform, Mastodon has grown by more than 800%, according to its founder and lead developer, Eugen Rochko, who said on Tuesday that it had jumped “from approximately 300k monthly active users to 2.5m between the months of October and November, with more and more journalists, political figures, writers, actors and organisations moving over”. Continue reading...

From robot-dinosaurs and hypersexual witches to epic clashes with mythological Gods and exquisite fantasies of supernatural wars, 2022 had it all – including a certain word game. Our critics pick the best

An entertaining election gave us twerking Shrek and an unexpected football tackle, but there was plenty of mayhem away from the campaign trail too

Incident has hit parts of media company’s technology infrastructure, with staff told to work from homeThe Guardian has been hit by a serious IT incident, which is believed to be a ransomware attack.The incident began late on Tuesday night and has affected parts of the company’s technology infrastructure, with staff told to work from home. Continue reading...

This is the first time the platform’s new owner has indicated he will pull back after calls for his ouster grewElon Musk said on Tuesday that he will not step down as chief executive of the company until he can find a suitable replacement, citing the state of the company’s finances as a reason to delay his promised departure.“I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams,” Musk tweeted, before joining a Twitter livestream to discuss the company’s situation with a former intern. Continue reading...

The makers of the wheeled shoes promise to turbo-charge your daily stroll, allowing you to walk at 250% of your usual speed. Could they be the future of pedestrianism?Walking is all right, isn’t it, but it’s a bit slow. A bit ponderous. Wouldn’t it be good if you could walk, but, like, go faster? That is the premise of Moonwalkers: a pair of wheeled shoes that promise you can walk at running speed, without any of the effort of actually running. “Walk how you usually do, and our AI adapts to you,” reads the website blurb. “It’s not skating; it’s genuinely walking, so no new skills are necessary to learn.”The Moonwalkers sounded perfect. I don’t like learning new skills, but I do like the idea of going faster while putting in zero extra effort. That was enough. On a cold winter afternoon, I meet up with Joseph Yang, the lead software engineer on Moonwalkers at Brooklyn Bridge Park in New York City, looking out across a swirling Hudson River. Yang, 26, pulls a pair of the vaunted Moonwalkers out of a canvas bag and sets them on the ground. Continue reading...

Regional provider is owned by LetterOne, whose investors include Mikhail Fridman and Petr AvenThe UK government has ordered the Russian oligarch-backed investment company LetterOne to sell regional broadband provider Upp, saying its current ownership was a national security risk.The business secretary, Grant Shapps, said the risk to national security relates to “the ownership of Upp … and Upp’s expanding full fibre broadband network”. Continue reading...

Xbox, PlayStation, PC; Coffee Stain Studios

In this week’s newsletter: Musk has a talent for trying to wiggle out of trouble on Twitter, only to land deeper in it – this time by asking users if he should quit as chief executive

Crypto mogul’s lawyer in Bahamas says he wanted to see indictment before consenting to travel to face fraud chargesFallen crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried has now decided to agree to be extradited to the United States to face fraud charges, two of his lawyers said on Monday, just hours after one of them told a Bahamas judge the FTX founder wanted to see the US indictment against him before consenting.On Monday afternoon, Jerone Roberts, Bankman-Fried’s criminal defense lawyer in the Bahamas, told media outlets including the New York Times that his client had agreed to be voluntarily extradited and that he hoped Bankman-Fried would be back in court later this week. Continue reading...

Monochrome device offers reading and handwriting on a big e-ink screen with very long battery lifeAmazon’s latest Kindle is a supersized e-reader that wants to replace not only the printed book but paper itself, offering reading and on-screen writing with the included stylus.The Scribe costs from £330 ($340) and is the firm’s largest and most expensive model yet with a 10.2in screen, dwarfing the 7in Oasis and 6.8in Paperwhite. Continue reading...

I forgot the Freeletics renewal date but £75 was taken from my account and I can’t get it backDo I have any rights against an automatic subscription renewal?A year ago I signed up to Freeletics, an exercise app. Since then I have stopped using it, and, unsurprisingly, forgot about the renewal date. Continue reading...

The billionaire says only paid Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to vote in future policy-related polls on the platformElon Musk has tweeted for the first time since more than 10 million people voted in favour of him stepping down as Twitter’s chief executive, saying that only paid Twitter Blue subscribers will be able to vote in future policy-related polls.On Sunday, Musk asked Twitter users whether he should step down as the head of the company, promising to abide by the results of his poll. When the poll closed on Monday, 57.5% said he should step down. Continue reading...

Epic Games agrees with FTC to pay $275m fine for collecting data on children and refund customers $245m for deceptive practicesThe video game company Epic Games will pay a total of $520m in penalties and refunds to settle complaints involving children’s privacy and methods that tricked players into making purchases, US federal regulators said on Monday.The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said that it had secured the record-breaking settlements for two cases from Epic Games, which makes the popular game Fortnite. Continue reading...

Billionaire chief executive of Tesla insists there is no successor in the wings at social media platform

Twitter owner promises to abide by the results of the poll, less than two months after appointing himself CEOElon Musk has asked Twitter users whether he should step down as the head of the company, promising to abide by the results of his poll.Musk assumed the role of CEO at the end of October after firing a host of senior executives and dissolving its board of directors. Within minutes of posting the poll, more than one million people had voted. Continue reading...

Delta software developed to help collect and disseminate information about enemy’s movements

From moon missions to fast-charging batteries and AI-sourced antibiotics, in no particular order, the year’s significant scientific developmentsThe year opened with a bang. Or rather, it didn’t. The successful film Don’t Look Up, in which a comet is found to be on a collision course with Earth, had been released just before Christmas 2021. In the bleak days of post-festive gloom, the news media were on an adrenaline high, chasing any and every story about potential asteroid collisions to cheer us all up. Five asteroids were to pass close to the Earth in January alone! Happily for the health and wellbeing of humanity, none was predicted to come within a whisker of hitting the planet. Nonetheless, the possibility of an asteroid colliding with Earth is a reality – the globe is covered in craters from previous impacts, and it is well known that 65m years ago, dinosaurs became extinct following the impact of an asteroid about 10km across. Can anything be done about saving us from this existential extraterrestrial threat? Fortunately, the international space community has taken the first steps towards reducing the risk of an asteroid catching us unawares. The joint Nasa- Esa mission Dart (Double Asteroid Re-Direction Test) was an ambitious attempt to alter the trajectory of a small asteroid (Dimorphos) as it orbited a slightly larger asteroid (Didymos), by sending a spacecraft to crash into it. In October, we learned that the mission had been even more successful than anticipated, and that the orbit of Dimorphos had changed – showing that we could, if given sufficient time, alter the path of an asteroid if it were on a collision course with Earth. Continue reading...

On the one hand, he’s a creative genius. On the other, he’s destroying a key debating chamberWatching what’s going on at Twitter is like watching a guy losing his mind in slow motion. The guy in question is Elon Musk, who once upon a time was the world’s richest man and now isn’t. (That slot is apparently occupied by Bernard Arnault, the luxury goods mogul.)Musk is in a hole but apparently doesn’t know Denis Healey’s First Law of Holes: when you’re in one, stop digging. The funny thing is that he dug the hole himself. First, he paid way over the odds for Twitter. Then, when Tesla shares (the main source of his wealth) tanked, and Twitter’s share price dropped, he tried to get out of the deal. That failed, so he was forced to borrow a lot of money – incurring interest payments of around a billion dollars a year – thereby becoming the reluctant owner of a loss-making company. And he hasn’t the faintest idea of how to make it work. Continue reading...

The cameraman captured the three girls bickering in a perfect movie-style shot. The next moment, they were smiling againThe argument broke out a few minutes into the rickety tram ride from Port de Sóller in Mallorca. Sisters Rosa, four, on the right, and Lois, seven, nearest the camera, were bickering with their friend Bibi, eight, all three a little cranky after a busy day on the beach. Their parents sat opposite, and Rosa and Lois’s dad, Joe Macdonald, used his iPhone 13 Pro Max to capture the scene.“It was late afternoon, maybe five or six, so the lighting was just right,” Macdonald says. “I work with camera and lighting for film and TV, so spend a lot of time looking at monitors, and know how fortunate it is to capture a moment that has drama but is also real. Continue reading...

The UN has said Twitter's decision to ban the accounts of a number of prominent US tech reporters sets a dangerous precedent and that it is 'very disturbed' by the move. The organisation's spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, said on Friday: 'Media voices should not be silenced on a platform that professes to be a space for freedom of speech.' After conducting a public poll on how to proceed, Twitter's owner, Elon Musk, decided to reinstate the accounts shortly after their suspension for what he said was their doxxing of his location

Blockchain aficionados have long flocked to the island for its favorable tax laws. But as the industry wobbles, local residents are pushing backOn a humid December evening in Puerto Rico, more than 100 cryptocurrency and blockchain aficionados gathered at a mansion within a gated, jungle-like enclave of San Juan. A local band played softly while waiters served hors d’oeuvres to attendees who paid as much as $3,000 to attend CoinAgenda Caribbean, a three-day conference promising a VIP experience of networking opportunities and fireside chats about the future of the industry.The crypto crowd arrived in chartered buses to the party, where they sipped on cocktails from an open bar around a pristine white pool, frogs singing in the trees surrounding the property owned by Michael Terpin, founder of CoinAgenda. A private chef from Lyon, France, provided a five-course meal – a fusion of French dishes and Puerto Rican staples like a pig roast and rice and beans. Continue reading...

On a wild day of bans, sudden U-turns and chaotic messaging, Musk abides by Twitter poll result that favoured restoring the accounts of reporters he accused of ‘doxxing’ himElon Musk has lifted the suspensions of the Twitter accounts of several journalists he had banned a day earlier, after the second poll he conducted on the topic went against his preferred outcome.On Thursday, Musk suspended a group of tech journalists from the website, including Ryan Mac from the New York Times, Drew Harwell of the Washington Post and CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, for what he said were breaches of the company’s new rule about revealing people’s locations. Continue reading...

The former hedge fund manager warns the Twitter CEO – who also runs Tesla and SpaceX – could be in for a rough 2023Elon Musk’s chaotic management of the social media platform Twitter is hurting his brand, and investors should stay away from stock in his electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, former hedge fund manager Danny Moses of The Big Short fame said this week.Moses’s remarks late Thursday came in an interview with CNBC on the same day that Twitter appeared to have at least temporarily suspended a number of prominent journalists who had reported on Musk and the operations of the platform which he acquired in October for $44bn. Continue reading...

Pressure grows on Elon Musk as EU says social media platform could face sanctions over suspensionsThe United Nations is “very disturbed” by Twitter’s abrupt suspension of a group of US journalists, a spokesperson has said, warning that the move sets a “dangerous precedent” – as the EU said the social media platform could fall foul of forthcoming digital regulations.Stéphane Dujarric said on Friday the UN was “very disturbed” by the barring of prominent tech reporters at news organisations including CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times who have written about Musk and the tech company he owns. Continue reading...

The site’s recent actions, such as banning critical journalists, appear to indicate policy is made on a whimFacebook’s community standards is a sprawling document, broken down into six top-level categories and 24 subcategories, distinguishing between content that is allowed and that which requires extra context, replete with examples of breaches and justifications for its choices. It is treated with quasi-legalistic power by the company’s oversight board, which incorporates its own precedent, as well as international human rights standards, to occasionally overrule Facebook’s own moderation choices.Twitter’s rulebook is simpler: don’t annoy Elon Musk. Continue reading...

Xbox, PC; Squanch Games

PC, PlayStation; Mads & Friends/Bedtime Digital Games

In this week’s newsletter: Working It from the Financial Times investigates how four businesses are trialling the perhaps revolutionary shorter work week. Plus: five podcasts to lift your spirits

After shedding thousands of jobs with Elon Musk’s takeover, the company is apparently shedding office furniture – and high-end cooking equipmentGreat news, holiday shoppers: you can finally get your hands on a 100% authentic, 3ft-tall statue of the Twitter bird.An online auction next month will feature hundreds of the company’s “surplus corporate office assets” that could add a certain je ne sais quoi to any home or workplace, from bizarre decor to high-end cooking equipment.A 6ft-tall planter in the shape of the @ symbol. Sure to be a hit with the tech-obsessed gardener in your life, this piece marries the ancient art of horticulture with a ubiquitous symbol of decaying public discourse. Expect heads to turn when you install this in front of your home, announcing to passersby that you have no soul. Continue reading...

Charges against Bankman-Fried include violation of campaign finance laws, as new CEO slams FTX in congressional hearing on the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange

After 70 years of research, experts in California have for the first time proven ignition is possible

I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons since I was a kid, but my first time directing the action was daunting. I certainly wasn’t expecting what came nextFour bedraggled adventurers stand together on the shore of a desolate island, shivering in the evening mist. They don’t know each other, and their motives for being here are unclear. But as they make stilted conversation they see, emerging from the briny waters, figures dressed in the rags of sailor outfits, moaning and shuffling and horrible. The adventurers stand around, roll some dice and chat some more, as the undead seamen lurch ever closer. Looking on at this desperate scene, I think to myself, “What the hell? Why can’t anyone make a decision? We’ve been here for half an hour! We’ve not even begun the proper adventure yet!”Dungeons and Dragons has always been there in the background of my life. When I was a kid in the late 70s, my dad’s best friend got into it; he’d show me the rule books and dice and tried to explain to me that this was a game about imagination, about pretending to be elves and wizards and warriors on a completely made up adventure. In the 1980s, as I got into video games, we saw the first fantasy adventures based around D&D lore – games with lots of stats on screen, and monsters inspired by Lord of the Rings. Then finally in the 90s I played with a group of friends at university. We huddled in cold rooms with rulebooks, character sheets and cheap supermarket cider and quested into the night. But I was never the Dungeon Master. Continue reading...