‘GT Sophy’ honed tactics and technique to beat 95% of human players of Playstation game after two daysHaving thrashed mortal champions at poker, chess, Go, and Starcraft, an artificial intelligence program has delivered another humiliation, leaving the world’s best video game racing drivers in the dust.Researchers at Sony trained an AI called GT Sophy to play the PlayStation game Gran Turismo and found that it could outrace 95% of human players after two days and continued to shave tenths of a second off its lap times over the following week. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5VZ09)
Ultra leads top-end phone line with S22 and Plus models, part-made from recycled plastic and fishing netsSamsung’s latest Android combines its Galaxy S and Note into one stylus-equipped superphone, which leads a new line of top-end S22 smartphones part-made from recycled plastic and fishing nets.Announced on Wednesday as part of its Unpacked livestreaming event, the Galaxy S22 Ultra combines the superzoom camera of last year’s top S21 with the body, form and features of Samsung’s popular Note phablet series, which has not been updated since 2020. Continue reading...
by Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editor on (#5VYY2)
Britain, the US and Australia point to growth in ‘sophisticated, high-impact ransomware incidents’There have been further increases in “sophisticated, high-impact ransomware incidents” coming from Russia and other former Soviet states during 2021, Britain, the US and Australia said in a joint review of cyber-extortion trends.Universities and schools were one of the top sectors targeted in the UK last year, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said, as well as businesses, charities, law firms, councils and the NHS. Hackers are increasingly offering services or exploits “for hire”. Continue reading...
Kryptovault’s operation is part of a fightback against criticism of the famously energy-intensive industryA line of large blue skips full of chopped wood sit at the back of a site belonging to Norway’s biggest bitcoin mining operation, a 5,000 sq metre warehouse on the outskirts of Hønefoss, a small town 40 miles west of Oslo.Hot air is being pumped into the 12 skips through bendy corrugated pipes curling out from the warehouse. Despite the snow, it will take a few days for the logs to be dried out, after which a local lumberjack, grateful for the free service, will take them away for sale. Continue reading...
Social network users may be asked to submit passport or credit card details under plans outlined by ministersReddit and Twitter users in the UK could be required to submit details of their passport or credit card as part of the government’s proposed age verification rules for pornography.The two sites are among the few mainstream social networks that continue to host large quantities of explicit adult material. Ministers said that social networks “where a considerable quantity of pornographic material is accessible” will have to conform to the same age verification rules as other commercial pornography websites. Continue reading...
A hashtag relating to the death of man employed at video platform Bilibili has been viewed hundreds of millions of times but company denies claims he was overworkedClaims that another Chinese tech worker has died after excessive overtime has reignited debate over the industry’s “996 culture”. The company denied that itoverworked the employee, but said it would pay more attention to the health of its employees.The 25-year-old reportedly died in hospital soon after he was taken to hospital from his home on Saturday afternoon. The video platform Bilibili, where the man was employed as a content auditor, said company representatives went to the hospital to assist and then notified his family. Continue reading...
Husband and wife, a rapper on TikTok, are accused in the US’s biggest-ever cryptocurrency theft caseThe US justice department has announced the unraveling of its biggest-ever cryptocurrency theft case, seizing a record-shattering $3.6bn in bitcoin in a saga that has captivated the internet.US officials said on Tuesday the recovered sum was linked to the hack of Bitfinex, a virtual currency exchange whose systems were breached by hackers nearly six years ago. Continue reading...
by Gwyn Topham Transport correspondent on (#5VY1H)
Exclusive: support for pledge on congestion and pollution as company unveils plans to expand zero-emission servicesUber has swung its weight behind proposals from the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, for more road charges as it unveiled plans to expand zero-emission cab services.The ride-hailing firm said it had more than doubled the number of electric vehicles (EVs) on its app in London to 5,000 in the past year, which will allow it to widen out its Uber Green service – where users can request only EV drivers – from the city centre to cover the whole of greater London in the spring. Continue reading...
Oversight Board of Meta recommends exception to privacy rules should be removedFacebook and Instagram should tighten privacy rules to protect against the revealing of private residential addresses and images online, known as doxxing, according to the independent body that decides if content should be on the social media platforms.The Oversight Board of Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has recommended that an exception to the company’s privacy rules that allows the sharing of private residential information when it is considered “publicly available” should be removed. Continue reading...
British company aims to seek stock market flotation after Japan’s SoftBank abandons saleNvidia’s $40bn (£29.6bn) takeover of the Cambridge-based Arm has collapsed due to insurmountable regulatory hurdles, leaving the British chip designer to seek a stock market flotation in the next year as an alternative.The deal, which would have been the largest in the semiconductor industry, had become mired in red tape on both sides of the Atlantic and in China and had also faced fierce opposition from players within the industry since it was announced in September 2020. Continue reading...
A reader bought the three-year card which is digital only but it won’t downloadI bought a three-year, £70 senior railcard from Trainline, but this has to be stored on my phone as an app, as there is now no paper option. But when I tried to download it on to my iPhone, an error message appeared saying that I couldn’t, as it needed an iOS operating system of 13.4 or above. The one on my phone is 12.5.As I had already booked some rail tickets with a senior railcard deduction I was forced to buy a one-year £30 paper senior railcard at the local station. Continue reading...
Thiel, a major donor to the Republican party, was seen by critics as part of the reason why Facebook did not censor TrumpPeter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, is stepping down from the board of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, after 17 years.Thiel, Facebook’s longest-serving board member and a major donor to the Republican party, plans to focus on backing Donald Trump’s allies in the November midterm elections, according to the New York Times. He recently donated $10m each to the Senate campaigns of Blake Masters, who is running for a seat in Arizona, and JD Vance, who is running in Ohio. Masters is the chief operating officer of Thiel’s family office and Vance used to work at one of Thiel’s venture funds. Continue reading...
Digital minister Chris Philp says it is too easy for children to access pornography onlineThe government has revived plans to make pornography websites carry out age checks, which would require British users to provide data such as their credit card or passport details to prove they are over 18.Ministers said the forthcoming online safety bill will be altered to ensure that commercial porn sites are brought within its scope, updating the draft legislation, which now applies to providers of user-generated pornography such as OnlyFans. Continue reading...
Boris Johnson’s new press chief believed to have been trying to stop Chinese firm from being dropped from UK’s 5G networkBoris Johnson’s new communications director lobbied a former chief of staff at Downing Street not to ban Chinese technology company Huawei over spying fears, leaked documents suggest.Guto Harri, who was appointed No 10’s press chief on Monday in the wake of the partygate resignations, reportedly asked Sir Eddie Lister which ministers he could “nudge” for help. Continue reading...
Scammers are turning to an underhand new tactic to con the unsuspecting into parting with cash over the phoneAfter chatting on WhatsApp about the latest series of Ozark, Paula Leonard’s* daughter broached a difficult topic: she needed two bills paid, as she was locked out of her online bank account after getting a new phone.Leonard immediately moved to help her US-based daughter as she has done in the past.
As long as the number of users kept growing, Mark Zuckerberg felt able to ride out scandals and criticism. He can no longer rely on that defenceFacebook was much in the news last week, although you may not realise that because it has been renamed Meta in the hope the bad vibes associated with its maiden name would gradually fade from public memory. (Google tried the same stunt with Alphabet and that hasn’t worked either.)For a change, though, Facebook’s latest moment at the top of the news agenda had nothing to do with scandals and everything to do with its financial results, which were so unexpectedly bad that the shares dropped 25% at one point, taking $240bn (£177bn) off its market value, which in turn led to a 2% drop in the Nasdaq index. Continue reading...
Fears of poll meddling by Russia prompt new ‘psychological defence’A top official from Sweden’s new “psychological defence” agency said the country had decided to bring back the cold war-era government body amid fears over Russian aggression against Ukraine.Magnus Hjort, deputy director of the agency, which was re-established last month to combat foreign disinformation, said concerns were especially heightened ahead of Sweden’s general election in September, against the backdrop of Europe’s “deteriorating security situation”. Continue reading...
New owner the New York Times says the hit game will (initially) remain free, but we look at some back up options if it ends up behind a paywallThe New York Times acquisition of Wordle has left devotees of the mega-hit word guessing game fearful that it will – like the newspaper’s crossword and other puzzles – end up locked behind a paywall, despite the Times’ assurances to the contrary.While it’s unlikely that any other game will achieve the viral success of Wordle, there are free, browser-based alternatives out there to puzzle over as you sip your morning coffee. Continue reading...
Founder Daniel Ek’s bid to make the anti-vaxxer controversy go away ignores the fact that it is paying the US comedian to appear on its serviceTwo decades ago, the late and much-lamented David Bowie said something that was eerily prophetic. “Music itself,” he observed, “is going to become like running water or electricity.” His point was that in 2002 we were still carrying our music in little bottles called iPods, just as Victorian travellers in India carried bottles of drinking water because you couldn’t rely on their being a safe and sanitary public supply.Spool forward 20 years and Spotify, the Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded in 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, is, in Bowie’s terms, the global music authority, providing sanitised recorded music everywhere, on demand. At the moment, it has something like 406 million active monthly users, of whom more than 180 million pay for its “premium” (advertising-free) service. Continue reading...
The Uruguayan photographer on snapping a sunbather in São Paulo, BrazilAfter moving from Uruguay to São Paulo, Brazil, during the pandemic, photographer Pablo Albarenga revelled in exploring his new home by bike. It felt like a safe, freeing way to familiarise himself with its vastness; the Brazilian city is the fourth largest in the world, and often referred to as a concrete jungle.
With KP Snacks the latest cyber-attack victim, firms must learn to defend themselves against a mounting menaceThe January snow lay thick on the Moscow ground, as masked officers of the FSB – Russia’s fearsome security agency – prepared to smash down the doors at one of 25 addresses they would raid that day.Their target was REvil, a shadowy conclave of hackers that claimed to have stolen more than $100m (£74m) a year through “ransomware” attacks, before suddenly disappearing. Continue reading...
Proposed laws require tech firms to prevent publication of harmful content or face substantial finesJoining digital pile-ons, sending threatening social media posts and deliberately posting hoax bomb threats are among the new criminal offences that could result in jail sentences under proposed online safety laws.Tech firms will also be required to prevent users from being exposed to content such as revenge porn, fraud and the sale of illegal drugs, or face the threat of substantial fines under the proposed changes. Previously, platforms such as Facebook and Twitter had to take such content down if it was flagged to them but now they would be legally required to prevent users from being exposed to them in the first place. Continue reading...
Zuckerberg blames ‘headwinds’ from Apple’s new iOS and changes in privacy for the record drop in valueMark Zuckerberg blamed “headwinds” this week after investors wiped about $220bn off Meta’s market value. One of the biggest blows came from longtime rival Apple.Apple has long marketed itself as a champion of privacy, explicitly positioning itself in opposition to Facebook. Tensions between the two giants escalated with the release of Apple’s new operating system, which Meta feared would hamper its revenue model. Continue reading...
Move follows warnings Mark Zuckerberg’s plan for metaverse could lead to increased online harassmentMark Zuckerberg’s virtual reality business is to introduce a mandatory distance between people’s digital avatars after warnings that the social media tycoon’s plans for a metaverse will lead to a new wave of online harassment.Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is making a multibillion-dollar bet on VR as the next source of growth for his empire but his strategy has already been dogged by warnings that virtual worlds are rife with abuse. Continue reading...
Paul Dowling, Janet Fraser, Rob Doran and Ian Elliott remember playing earlier versions of the game before Wordle’s viral explosionI was amused to read your editorial (2 February) about the internet game Wordle, created by Josh Wardle for his partner and subsequently sold to the New York Times.I used to play this game on paper in the 1990s with my wife at the time and have included a brief discussion of it in my book Sociology as Method. I describe the game as a recontextualisation of a board game called Mastermind, which was played with coloured pegs rather than words. One player placed an arrangement of pegs hidden at one end of the board, and the other had to try to deduce the arrangement before the board was filled with their incorrect attempts. Continue reading...
Analysis: shares in Meta fell by 25% after latest results revealed first-ever decline in daily users• Facebook’s first ever drop in daily users prompts Meta shares to tumble
KP Snacks also warns of supply problems for McCoy’s and Tyrrells crisps after ransomware attack hits IT systemsA cyber-attack targeting KP Snacks could lead to a shortage of some of Britain’s most popular snacks including Hula Hoops, McCoy’s and Tyrrells crisps, Butterkist, Skips, Nik Naks and KP Nuts.The company has sent a letter to stores saying the ransomware attack, which has crippled its IT and communications systems, could lead to supply issues until “the end of March at the earliest” as it “cannot safely process orders or dispatch goods”. Continue reading...
Subscriber outlook overshadowed fourth-quarter earnings as the company’s shares fell nearly 18% in late tradingSpotify on Wednesday forecast current-quarter subscribers lower than Wall Street expectations, but executives sought to reassure investors that growth had not cratered even as it deals with the fallout from the controversy around the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.The company’s shares fell as much as 18% in late trading after Spotify reported the subscriber outlook. Continue reading...
Will the hit game imminently be locked behind a paywall or stay as it is? What about ads? The NYT’s head of games explains the planIn a month of spectacular video game industry buyouts, symbolised by Microsoft’s incredible $68bn swoop for Activision Blizzard, there is one purchase that has sent paroxysms of fear across the planet. On Monday, the New York Times revealed that it had bought the viral megahit Wordle for a “low seven figure sum”. The web-based word puzzle, which launched in October, was originally intended as a gift from software engineer Josh Wardle to his partner. But it has become a viral sensation, amassing an audience of millions – and key to its appeal is the fact that it’s free, with no ads.So what does a big newspaper like the New York Times want with a game like Wordle, and what happens next? Continue reading...
In this week’s newsletter: a radical rethink of how the company uses cookies seems at first to be a win for privacy advocates. Here’s what you need to know
Watch Duty, launched last year, sends users push notifications about new and spreading fire, giving them vital time to prepareGrowing threats from wildfires loom large across the American west as blazes burn with greater ferocity and frequency. Alongside them, residents’ calls for on-demand information during disasters has only continued to grow.In California, just hours north of the tech hub in Silicon Valley, a new app called Watch Duty has jumped into the void. The budding platform promises to alert and warn users about encroaching wildfires in real time – and it’s free. Continue reading...
Jack Sweeney, who wants Tesla CEO to hand over $50k to remove flight tracker bot, sets sights on other celebritiesThe Florida teenager demanding Elon Musk hand over $50,000 to stop him tweeting the location of the billionaire’s private jet has said he is creating dozens more accounts tracking the movements of other rich and famous people.Jack Sweeney, a 19-year-old college student and aviation enthusiast, said he had created 16 automated Twitter accounts, or bots, similar to @ElonJet to follow jets owned by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (@GatesJet), Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban and the rapper Drake. Continue reading...
The feud between major artists and Spotify has overlooked problems faced by those with less power and financesThe past week has seen artists such as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash and Nils Lofgren stand up to Spotify, boycotting the streaming giant because of Covid-19 misinformation spread on its popular and exclusively available The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Their protest has been applauded by many, but indie rapper Open Mike Eagle tweeted a very different perspective.“I love Neil Young but i’m not following that crazy rich man anywhere,” he wrote before adding: “what’s the protest option for non set for life musicians?” Continue reading...
The Netflix documentary unravels the financial and emotional cons of Simon Leviev, who scammed women who thought he was their friend or boyfriendWhen Cecilie Fjellhøy first met the man she knew as Simon Leviev for a 10am coffee date at the Four Seasons Hotel in London in January 2018, he seemed to align with his Tinder profile. His pictures were flashy – designer clothes and expensive sunglasses in luxury cars and private jets – and his in-person demeanor was equally debonair. “He has this magnetism,” Fjellhøy recalls of her first impression in the Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler, out this week. “There’s something about this guy that is special.”Fjellhøy, then a 29-year-old Norwegian graduate student living in London, was charmed by the man who claimed to be the “prince of diamonds”, a billionaire heir to the diamond fortune of the Israeli magnate Lev Leviev. And she was surprised: Simon had to leave that afternoon for a business trip in Sofia, Bulgaria. Would she like to go with him via private jet? She agreed – “I felt I would be stupid if I said no,” she says – and the film, directed by Felicity Morris, stitches together the trip through the documentation on Fjellhøy’s phone. There’s a “Yolo” WhatsApp message to her friends; photos of Leviev’s security team aboard the private jet; video of the woman and toddler Leviev said were his ex and child, and one in which Fjellhøy kisses him on the cheek. They spent the night together in the hotel, and she flew back to London the next day, smitten with the man with whom she began exchanging messages daily. Continue reading...
Whether you’re boycotting the service over Joe Rogan or just looking for something new, it’s a cinch to cancel and you can take your playlists tooHow do you switch over from Spotify to another music service? What are the options? And which service pays artists the most?The ongoing controversy over Spotify’s flagship podcaster Joe Rogan, whose vaccine misinformation has led to musicians pulling their music from the platform, has also caused a lot of listeners to look for alternatives. Spotify reportedly accounts for 31% of the total music streaming market, more than double its nearest competitor – Apple Music – at 15%. Continue reading...
The puzzle’s global success has turned Josh Wardle into a megastar in the gaming world and bemused his familyHe is the toast of New York, of London – and of a small village called Llanddewi Rhydderch.Just four months after Josh Wardle invented the wonderfully simple and soothing puzzle Wordle, he is a megastar in the world of games and is a great deal wealthier after the New York Times acquired his creation for a seven-figure sum. Continue reading...
‘Rolling stop’ lets vehicles go through intersections with all-way stop signs at up to 5.6mphTesla is recalling nearly 54,000 cars and SUVs because their “Full Self-Driving” software lets them roll through stop signs.Documents posted on Tuesday by US safety regulators say Tesla will disable the feature with an over-the-internet software update. The “rolling stop” feature allows vehicles to go through intersections with all-way stop signs at up to 5.6mph (9 km/h). Continue reading...
This weird postmodern drama sees a lonely teenager join a virtual world where she becomes a hugely successful singerThere’s some amazing big-screen spectacle in this weird postmodern emo photo-love drama from Japanese anime director Mamoru Hosoda, whose previous film Mirai elevated him to auteur status. Suzu, voiced by Kaho Nakamura, is a deeply unhappy and lonely teenager at high school, who lives with her dad. Her mum died some years ago, attempting (successfully) to save a child from drowning and Suzu can’t come to terms with the zero-sum pointlessness of this calamity: a total stranger was saved but her mother died. Or not zero in fact: while her loss increased the sum-total of unhappiness, the most popular boy in school – a friend since they were little – is tender and protective towards Suzu.Her life is complicated further when she is persuaded to join a virtual reality meta-universe called U, a glittering unearthly city like a next-level Manhattan or Shibuya. (Presumably entry into this fantasy world needs a VR headset, although oddly this is not made plain.) Participants have their biometrics read and get an enhanced avatar of themselves and Suzu finds that she is now “Belle”, an ethereally beautiful young woman with quirky freckles and a wonderful singing voice. To her astonishment, Suzu finds that Belle is becoming a colossally famous singer – but at the very high point of this meta-success she comes across the Beast, who disrupts one of her concerts: a brutish, aggressive outcast figure loathed by the self-appointed vigilante guardians of U. Continue reading...
Puzzle creator Josh Wardle ‘thrilled’ that newspaper is taking over internet sensationThe New York Times has acquired the viral word game Wordle for an undisclosed seven-figure sum, the publisher announced on Monday.Created by a Reddit engineer and launched in October, Wordle gives players just six guesses to determine a five-letter word that changes every day. The soothing daily puzzle has become a hit since its launch, quickly attracting hundreds of thousands, then millions, of players. Social media posts about its game of the day have become ubiquitous, along with screenshots of the game’s distinctive grid. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5VKNY)
Good sound, noise cancelling and spatial audio, with six-hour battery, Android support and cheaper priceA new, cheaper alternative to the AirPods Pro is here – and it is also from Apple. The Beats Fit Pro have many of the same features but cost £40 less, are more workout-friendly than their cousins and work with Android, too.Priced at £199 ($199.99/A$299.95) they offer the same noise-cancelling as the AirPods Pro and features such as spatial audio virtual surround sound. Continue reading...
Modern TVs gather data that can be monetised. How much of this surveillance can you avoid without turning your smart TV dumb?Watching TV feels like a benign pastime, but as all TVs become “smart” – connected to the internet via your router – they are gaining the ability to watch you too. As soon as you switch them on, smart TVs made by the likes of LG, Samsung and Sony are gathering data from the TV itself, as well as from the operating system and apps. Then there are the devices you plug into your TV, such as Google’s Chromecast, Apple TV and Amazon’s Fire Stick.A TV is no longer just a device for showing you content – it has become a two-way mirror allowing you to be observed in real time by a network of advertisers and data brokers, says Rowenna Fielding, director of data protection consultancy Miss IG Geek. “The purpose of this is to gather as much information as possible about your behaviour, interests, preferences and demographics so it can be monetised, mainly through targeted advertising.” Continue reading...
Facebook’s plans to build a $10bn virtual reality world were ridiculed yet the rest of Silicon Valley has serious Fomo and is piling inOnce upon a time, a very long time ago – until Thursday 28 October 2021, to be precise – the term “metaverse” was known only to lexicographers and science fiction enthusiasts. And then, suddenly, it was everywhere. How come? Simply this: Mark Zuckerberg, the supreme leader of Facebook, pissed off by seeing nothing but bad news about his company in the media, announced that he was changing its name to Meta and would henceforth be devoting all his efforts – plus $10bn (£7bn) and thousands of engineers – to building a parallel universe called the metaverse.And then, because the tech industry and the media that chronicle its doings are basically herds of mimetic sheep, the metaverse was suddenly the newest new thing. This was news to Neal Stephenson, the writer who actually invented the term in his 1992 novel, Snow Crash. “Since there seems to be growing confusion on this,” he tweeted, “I have nothing to do with anything that FB is up to involving the metaverse, other than the obvious fact that they’re using a term I coined in Snow Crash. There has been zero communication between me and FB & no biz relationship.” Continue reading...
As part of his drive to use tech to close social divides, the California Democrat has written a book, Dignity in the Digital AgeShortly after Silicon Valley sent him to Washington, Ro Khanna visited “Silicon Holler”, a name coined by a colleague, Hal Rogers, for the fledgling tech sector in eastern Kentucky.The two congressmen’s districts had little in common. Khanna’s was among the wealthiest, most diverse and most Democratic. Rogers’ was among the poorest, whitest and most Republican. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian