Technology | The Guardian

Speedcam Anywhere allows anyone to submit evidence of drivers speedingThe developers of a new app that uses AI to estimate the speed of a passing car say they have been forced into anonymity by the vicious response from drivers.The app, Speedcam Anywhere, is the product of a team of AI scientists with backgrounds in Silicon Valley companies and top UK universities. Its creators hope it will encourage police to take speeding more seriously and enable residents, pedestrians and cyclists to document traffic crimes in their area.A user of the app opens it when they hear a speeding car approaching and films the car passing.The app uses the number plate of the passing car to search the DVLA’s public registration database to find the make and model of the car.From there, it determines the distance between the axles of the car, and compares it with the footage to calculate the speed.The user then has the option of saving the video, or generating a report from it to share with the authorities. Continue reading...

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Unlikely stars, unexpected stories and, of course, a silly video of a pet

Image-focused social network says it will take down content that distorts or denies facts of climate crisisPinterest is to block all climate misinformation, as the image-focused social network seeks to limit the spread of false and misleading claims.Under the new policy the site is committing to take down content that distorts or denies the facts of the climate crisis, whether posted as adverts or normal “organic” content. Continue reading...

Staff at more than 50 locations have contacted the organizers as a second warehouse is set to vote on a union later this monthStaff at more than 50 Amazon warehouses have contacted the organizers of last week’s historic vote establishing Amazon’s first-ever union, expressing interest in setting up unions of their own.“The revolution is here,” said Chris Smalls, who helped coordinate the triumphant campaign at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York. Continue reading...

Messages analyzed were to well-known social media users such as Jamie Klingler, Rachel Riley and Bryony GordonA new report analyzing thousands of direct messages sent to high profile women on Instagram has uncovered what researchers describe as “systemic” failures to protect women in the public eye from “misogynist harassment”.The report, released by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), analyzed thousands of messages sent to five well known Instagram users: including actor Amber Heard, UK television presenter Rachel Riley, activist Jamie Klingler, journalist Bryony Gordon, and magazine founder Sharan Dhaliwal. Continue reading...

Quartet targeted by clients – thought to be Jordanian government agencies – of Israeli company even after Apple sued in NovemberNew evidence has revealed that an Apple iPhone was successfully hacked by a government user of NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware in December, weeks after the technology giant sued the Israeli company in a US court and called for it to be banned from “harming individuals” using Apple products.A report published on Tuesday by security researchers at Front Line Defenders (FLD) and Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto found that phones belonging to four Jordanian human rights defenders, lawyers and journalists were hacked by government clients of NSO – which appear to be Jordanian government agencies – from August 2019 to December 2021. Continue reading...

Ronan Burtenshaw’s publication was labelled as discriminatory and blocked from being promotedFacebook will restore a banned advert promoting an opinion piece calling for renters rights, after the company’s automated systems blocked the post for “discrimination”. But critics say the error will be repeated unless Facebook acts to protect campaigners on its platform.On Monday Ronan Burtenshaw, the editor of Tribune Magazine, received a message from Facebook saying one of his publication’s posts had been blocked from being promoted on the site. The story, headlined The Rent is Too Damn High, calls for “a struggle of renters against the rentiers” and concludes that solving the housing crisis requires a massive programme of council house creation. Continue reading...

AI algorithms prompt robot to interrogate, select, and decision-make to create a paintingBrush clamped firmly in bionic hand, Ai-Da’s robotic arm moves slowly, dipping in to a paint palette then making slow, deliberate strokes across the paper in front of her.This, according to Aidan Meller, the creator of the world’s first ultra-realistic humanoid robot, Ai-Da, is “mind-blowing” and “groundbreaking” stuff. Continue reading...

Treasury wants to show Britain is at cutting edge for new technologies with cryptoasset launch by summerThe Treasury has asked the Royal Mint to create a non-fungible token, or NFT, as it attempts to show Britain is at the cutting edge for new technologies by launching its own cryptoasset.It said the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, had asked the 1,136-year-old institution to create the NFT – a type of unique digital asset stored on a blockchain, the same decentralised ledger of transactions used to buy and sell cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin – so it could be issued by the summer. Continue reading...

A hack using a forged legal request that exposed consumer data collected by Apple and Meta shed light on the reach of the lawA brazen hack that exposed consumer data collected by Apple and the Facebook-parent company Meta has raised fresh questions about how secure our data is in the hands of tech companies and how easily law enforcement can get hold of the information big tech collects.It was revealed last week that hackers obtained the information of some Apple and Meta users by forging an emergency legal request, one of several mechanisms by which law enforcement agencies can request or demand that tech companies hand over data such as location and subscriber information. Continue reading...

New top sports watch line gets slick OLED screen upgrade, but shorter battery life as a resultGarmin’s latest luxury sports watch is a departure for the firm, which has swapped its usual low-power LCD for a fancy OLED screen, sacrificing battery life in the process. It better competes with the Apple Watch and its ilk, but are the trade-offs really worth it for an adventure-tracking smartwatch?The Epix (gen 2) is a new line of expensive all-singing, all-dancing watches from Garmin costing from £799.99 ($899.99/A$1,399). They are built on the company’s Fenix 7 – the benchmark for these types of smartwatches – sharing its design, sensors, software and comprehensive navigation, sport and activity-tracking features.Screen: 1.3in AMOLED (416x416 pixels)Case size: 47mmCase thickness: 14.5mmBand size: standard 22mm quick releaseWeight: 47 or 53g body onlyStorage: 16 or 32GBWater resistance: 100 metres (10ATM)Sensors: GNSS (GPS, Glonass, Galileo, BeiDuo, QZSS), compass, thermometer, HR, pulse OxConnectivity: Bluetooth, ANT+, wifi Continue reading...

Safety experts call for immediate action to stop millions of underage viewers being damaged by extreme materialAn “immediate and urgent” introduction of age verification is needed to stop children accessing extreme content on pornography websites, children’s charities have warned.In a strongly worded open letter to the largest pornography sites in the UK, a coalition of charities and child safety experts led by Barnardo’s said the harm being done to children was so severe that the issue could not wait to be addressed as part of the online safety bill, which has yet to come into effect. Continue reading...

To tackle the climate crisis and support our energy needs, we need both nuclear and renewables, writes Dr Charles ClementA reply is needed to the letters (23 March) objecting to political parties supporting nuclear power. How can the chairman of the British Energy Efficiency Federation dispute the statement that “electricity demand is expected to rise steadily in the next decade”? Has he not realised that, to meet the climate crisis, the necessary replacement of fossil fuels in road transport and home heating requires electric-powered engines and heat pumps, respectively?Safe underground storage of nuclear waste has been developed. This has never been an insoluble problem. By contrast, little money has been spent on other waste products such as heavy metals, industrial chemicals and plastics. In comparison with nuclear waste, the poisonous effects of heavy metals such as mercury, lead and cadmium never decay with time. Continue reading...

Jonathan Michie on why robots of the future must be programmed to explain what they do and why, and Chris Percy on AI and bridgeYou are right to acknowledge the work of Donald Michie (full disclosure: I’m his son) on artificial intelligence developing new insights rather than relying on brute force, and on the importance of AI communicating these insights to humans (The Guardian view on bridging human and machine learning: it’s all in the game, 30 March). This pioneering work is important for the reasons you explain; it also speaks to debates on whether the rise of the robots will result in them enslaving us.My father argued that it was vital that the robots and AI of the future must be required (programmed) to explain what they were doing and why in terms understandable to humans. Without that, we really will be in trouble – from the routine (why did the driverless car crash?) to the existential.

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The How to Fail host teams up with best friend and therapist Emma Reed-Turrell to dissect their – and our – life challenges. Plus: five of the best podcasts about women

Cheesing, or covertly using system glitches and design oversights to beat your opponents, is considered a shameful gaming strategy – or is it just smart?Barely an hour into Elden Ring, the latest furiously difficult fantasy adventure by the Japanese studio From Software, I made a vital discovery: enemy warriors can be tricked into falling down lift shafts. Or off cliffs. I even managed to tempt one skilled and deadly knight to walk out of his castle and into the path of a giant boulder – a trap that had been meant for me. It killed him instantly, saving me an intense battle that would have probably involved multiple deaths and restarts. I knew that I had crossed an important, almost forbidden Rubicon – I was now cheesing one of the most critically acclaimed games of the year.Cheesing is video-game slang for beating tasks or enemies through tactics that while not exactly cheating, are certainly not following Queensbury rules. When you cheese a game, you’re exploiting systemic quirks or apparent design oversights to gain maximum advantage for minimum skill or effort. Players have always cheesed. It’s something I discovered via the 1985 fighting game Way of the Exploding Fist, in which every single one of the enemy fighters could be beaten by continuously using the leg sweep move. Later, Street Fighter II became notorious for its vulnerability to cheese aficionados. These ignoble warriors would invariably play as Blanka, whose electrification move afforded vital seconds of invulnerability. Continue reading...

Rossgram, a substitute for Instagram, mocked as Russian PM announces policy of ignoring copyright

A French startup may have cracked AI’s problem of trust with software that can learn better than humans – and express that learningLast week an artificial intelligence – called NooK – beat eight world champion players at bridge. That algorithms can outwit humans might not seem newsworthy. IBM’s Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. In 2016, Google’s AlphaGo defeated a Go grandmaster. A year later the AI Libratus saw off four poker stars. Yet the real-world applications of such technologies have been limited. Stephen Muggleton, a computer scientist, suggests this is because they are “black boxes” that can learn better than people but cannot express, and communicate, that learning.NooK, from French startup NukkAI, is different. It won by formulating rules, not just brute-force calculation. Bridge is not the same as chess or Go, which are two-player games based on an entirely known set of facts. Bridge is a game for four players split into two teams, involving collaboration and competition with incomplete information. Each player sees only their cards and needs to gather information about the other players’ hands. Unlike poker, which also involves hidden information and bluffing, in bridge a player must disclose to their opponents the information they are passing to their partner. Continue reading...

Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle unit said it started carrying employees in electric Jaguar I-Pace SUVs without human backupWaymo’s self-driving ride-hailing service is branching out to San Francisco.The autonomous vehicle unit of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said Wednesday that it started carrying employees in electric Jaguar I-Pace SUVs without human backup drivers. Previously the company had been testing the vehicles with a safety driver behind the wheel just in case. Continue reading...

Ronin, blockchain project that powers the popular online game Axie Infinity, says unidentified hackers used stolen private keysBlockchain project Ronin said on Tuesday that hackers stole cryptocurrency now worth almost $615m from its systems, in what would be one of the largest cryptocurrency heists on record.The project said that unidentified hackers on 23 March stole 173,600 ether tokens and 25.5 million USD coin tokens. At current exchange rates, the stolen funds are worth $615m, but they were worth $540m at the time of the attack. Continue reading...

Matthew Hardy so frightened some of his victims that they slept with weapons. Although he was known to the police – and even prosecuted – it was more than a decade before he was jailedThe conversations always started the same way. A woman would get a message from a social media user. It would say: “Can I tell you a secret?” The messenger often, but not always, appeared to be a friendly young woman, peppering the conversation with words such as “hun” and signing off with a kiss.But the messenger would also claim to have information about the woman’s life. The victim’s partner was cheating on her; a friend was talking behind her back. If the woman blocked the anonymous messenger, another appeared. If the woman stopped responding, she would get incessant calls from someone breathing down the phone. Continue reading...

Three-year-olds are on the video-sharing platform and it may be affecting their attention spanBritish toddlers are increasingly likely to be users of TikTok, with a substantial number of parents saying their preschool children use the video service despite the app supposedly being restricted to those aged 13 and older.About 16% of three- and four-year-olds view TikTok content, according to research commissioned by media regulator Ofcom. This rises to a third of all children in the five- to seven-year-old age group. Continue reading...

Gaming company, which faces further lawsuits, agrees to take steps to prevent and address discrimination and harassmentA US judge has approved an $18m settlement between Activision Blizzard and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, bringing one of several discrimination lawsuits against the gaming company to a close.During a hearing on Tuesday, US district judge Dale Fischer said she would give final approval to the settlement after Activision and the EEOC made various tweaks she requested last week. Continue reading...

Subscription offers games for low fee as tech firms compete to establish Netflix-style streaming serviceSony is preparing to launch a PlayStation competitor to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass, kick-starting a race between the console firms to establish a Netflix-style service for gaming.The service will offer a wide selection of titles for a low monthly subscription and build on Sony’s long-running PlayStation Plus model, which offers members two free games a month and access to online multiplayer options for £49.99 a year. Continue reading...

Run out of cyan? Help could be at hand as the takeaway delivery company teams up with WH Smith to get your home printer working againPass notes: Printer ink.Age: Ink has been around for yonks, since early folks started using soot to draw pictures on the walls of their caves. The history of ink can be traced through ancient Egypt, China, fountain pens, the birth of printing … Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: from Firewatch to Old Man’s Journey, we let you tell us what to play next

They are low-tech and hard to text on, but the simplicity is comforting. I was a devotee for years and can see the appealI was never ideologically opposed to smartphones. Or, at least, I wasn’t at first. It all began one spring afternoon in 2006, when a group of friends and I were mugged. The assailant demanded our phones and wallets but when I handed him my Nokia 1110, whose keypad was strapped to it with an elastic band, the mugger’s response was categorical: “Nah, mate.”It was humiliating. While my friends could bask in universal sympathy – they had, after all, lost their beloved and expensive BlackBerrys – I had to tell the rest of our school and the police that my phone was so crap it had been rejected. Even as a trophy.Max Fletcher is writer based in London. Continue reading...

Part laptop, part drawing tablet, part workstation, there’s nothing quite like this Windows 11 machineThe Surface Laptop Studio is Microsoft’s creative workstation that replaces the unique outgoing Surface Book line with a slightly more normal laptop-like form but is still very unusual.The new top of Microsoft’s laptop line costs from £1,449 ($1,399.99/A$2,399) and is a chunky machine geared up as a desktop replacement, rather than a thin and light notebook you carry everywhere. Continue reading...

Victory marks milestone for AI as bridge requires more human skills than other strategy gamesAn artificial intelligence has beaten eight world champions at bridge, a game in which human supremacy has resisted the march of the machines until now.The victory represents a new milestone for AI because in bridge players work with incomplete information and must react to the behaviour of several other players – a scenario far closer to human decision-making.1996: IBM’s Deep Blue chess machine wins a game against world chess champion Garry Kasparov but loses the match 2-4. A year later, Kasparov loses the rematch.2007: Checkers is solved by researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada. After sifting through 500bn positions, they build a checkers-playing computer programme that can’t be beaten.2011: IBM’s Watson computer defeats TV gameshow Jeopardy! champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, claiming the $1m first prize.2016: Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo defeats Korean Go champion Lee Sedol 4-1. The Korea Baduk Association awards AlphaGo the highest Go grandmaster rank, an honorary 9 dan.2022: NukkAI’s bridge-playing computer NooK defeats eight world bridge champions in Paris. Continue reading...

Jim Carrey reprises his role as baddy Robotnik and Idris Elba plays spiny anteater Knuckles in Sonic’s so-so second comingBefore the screening of this sequel to 2020’s Sonic the Hedgehog started, a representative from the film company asked us to please not spoil any of the film’s big surprises. Human nature being what it is, I spent the whole time anxiously wondering what is the thing I’m not supposed to spoil. That the good guys win in the end? Surely you could have guessed that, dear reader, given the film is clearly aimed at a family audience and features animated characters who first emerged in a video game where no one ever dies, just respawns.There’s not much to spoil about Sonic the Hedgehog 2 because there’s not very much to say about it, other than it’s mildly amusing and reasonably competently assembled. Picking up where the first film left off, bright-blue hedgehog from another dimension Sonic (voiced again by Parks and Recreation’s Ben Schwartz) is still living as a kind of adopted son with Tom (James Marsden), a local cop in the small Montana town of Green Hills, and his veterinarian wife Maddie (Tika Sumpter), both of whom are kindly but not great at pretending to be acting with an animated character they can’t see during filming. Continue reading...

Top boss Meng Wanzhou makes first public appearance since her release from custody in Canada last yearChinese telecoms company Huawei has reported a decrease in sales but record profit for 2021, as its top executive, Meng Wanzhou, made her first public appearance since being released from Canadian custody last autumn.The Shenzhen-based company said on Monday its net profits surged 75.9% year on year to 113.7bn yuan (£13.6bn), despite US sanctions. But its revenue skidded 29% to 636.8bn yuan, in line with Huawei’s previous forecast in December. Continue reading...

Special IT force of 30 soldiers on quad bikes is vital part of Ukraine’s defence, but forced to crowdfund for suppliesOne week into its invasion of Ukraine, Russia massed a 40-mile mechanised column in order to mount an overwhelming attack on Kyiv from the north.But the convoy of armoured vehicles and supply trucks ground to a halt within days, and the offensive failed, in significant part because of a series of night ambushes carried out by a team of 30 Ukrainian special forces and drone operators on quad bikes, according to a Ukrainian commander. Continue reading...

The technology behind autonomous vehicles has proved devilishly hard to perfect. And progress hasn’t been helped by Tesla boss Elon Musk’s army of superfans“I would be shocked if we do not achieve full self-driving safer than a human this year,” said Tesla chief executive, Elon Musk, in January. For anyone who follows Musk’s commentary, this might sound familiar. In 2020, he promised autonomous cars the same year, saying: “There are no fundamental challenges.” In 2019, he promised Teslas would be able to drive themselves by 2020 – converting into a fleet of 1m “robotaxis”. He has made similar predictions every year going back to 2014.From late 2020, Tesla expanded beta trials of its “Full Self-Driving” software (FSD) to about 60,000 Tesla owners, who must pass a safety test and pay $12,000 for the privilege. The customers will pilot the automated driver assistance technology, helping to refine it before a general release. Continue reading...

Waiting lists of thousands, cars selling out in seconds – welcome to the frustrating world of the Australian EV buyer

Having ensured the Swedish firm led the switch away from fossil fuels, its former boss is full of praise for Tesla – but has no regrets about filling city streets with SUVsHåkan Samuelsson was a relatively late convert to electric cars. He took over as boss of Volvo in 2012, but it was only three or four years later that he realised he needed to oversee the biggest shift in the company’s history: ending the use of fossil fuels.Since then, Volvo has committed to making no more petrol or diesel cars after 2030. That will be the fastest phase-out of any traditional carmaker of equivalent size, and Volvo has put sustainability at the heart of its branding. Continue reading...

The Venezuela-based photographer on a moment of magical realism in CaracasAccording to Isabela Eseverri, Caracas has a very specific morning soundtrack. Wake early enough in Venezuela’s capital and you’ll hear the transition from crickets to birds, most notably the loud chachalacas. The bark from a neighbourhood dog sets off the rest, then, later, the macaws join in.“Growing up, you didn’t see them much, but in the last decade their population has grown exponentially,” Eseverri says. “Because they’re an invasive species there are worries that they threaten our local bird population, but the locals adore them and feed them. You’ll be on the freeway and you’ll see 10 of these incredibly colourful birds fly by. It’s in keeping with the Latin American magical realism I love so much.” Continue reading...

Digital Markets Act seeks to prevent the likes of Google and Facebook parent company Meta from dominating digital marketsThe European Union reached an agreement on landmark digital rules to rein in online “gatekeepers” such as Google and Facebook’s parent company, Meta.EU officials agreed late on Thursday on wording for the bloc’s Digital Markets Act, part of a long-awaited overhaul of digital regulations with major implications for the global tech market. The act, which still needs other approvals, seeks to prevent the biggest of tech firms from dominating digital markets through the threat of fines or even the possibility of a company breakup. Continue reading...

New target comes after criticism of infrastructure rollout for failing to match surging vehicle salesThe UK government has set a new target to increase the number of electric car chargers more than ten times to 300,000 by 2030 after heavy criticism that the rollout of public infrastructure is too slow to match rapid growth in sales.The Department for Transport (DfT) said it would invest an extra £450m to do so, alongside hefty sums of private capital. Sales of new cars and vans with petrol and diesel engines will be banned from 2030. Continue reading...

Quartet accused in two major hacking campaigns between 2012 and 2018, indictment unsealed by justice department readsThe US has unveiled criminal charges against four Russian government officials, saying they engaged in two major hacking campaigns between 2012 and 2018 that targeted the global energy sector and affected thousands of computers across 135 countries.In one now-unsealed indictment from August 2021, the justice department said three alleged hackers from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) carried out cyber-attacks on the computer networks of oil and gas firms, nuclear power plants, and utility and power transmission companies across the world between 2012 and 2017. Continue reading...

He created the image file format that defined an internet culture for decades in 1987 while working at CompuServeIf a picture is worth a thousand words, then a gif is worth millions. The image file format has been a defining element of internet culture for decades, with glass-raising DiCaprios and mic-dropping Obamas facilitating self-expression in a faceless digital world. And we have one man to thank for all the jokes, snark and praise: Stephen Wilhite, inventor of the gif, who died last week, aged 74.Wilhite, who lived in Milford, Ohio, contracted Covid two weeks before his death, his wife, Kathaleen Wilhite, told NPR. Continue reading...

The defense ministry began using technology from Clearview AI which scrapes images on the web to match uploaded photosUkraine is using facial recognition software to help identify the bodies of Russian soldiers killed in combat and track down their families to inform them of their deaths, Ukraine’s vice-prime minister told the Reuters news service.Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice-prime minister who also runs the ministry of digital transformation, told Reuters his country had been using software facial recognition provider Clearview AI to find the social media accounts of dead Russian soldiers. Continue reading...

Data brokers collect our personal data and sell it on – but a new case shows just how easily people’s security can be breachedThere are a number of ways your personal data could end up in the hands of entities you’ve never directly given it to. One of them is through the data-broker industry: a complex network of companies that profits off the sale of data such as your location and your purchases, as well as biographical and demographic information.Now, a new lawsuit is giving consumers an unprecedented peek into this opaque world, and illuminating just how easily a data broker can lose control of the user information it collects. Continue reading...

Services including App Store, Apple TV and Apple Music resume after outage, as Apple yet to confirm what caused problemsApple has said all its services, including the App Store, Apple TV and Apple Music, have resumed following an outage that started late afternoon on Monday.Nearly a dozen Apple services were down for thousands of users. Continue reading...

Technology firm should help spot Russian-based users, says founder of group matching up with UK hosts• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updatesOne of the largest Facebook groups matching Ukrainian refugees with UK host families has warned of the dangers of infiltration posed by Russian trolls and traffickers.Room for Ukrainians in the UK is a Facebook group that was set up little over two weeks ago and already has 12,500 members. Most of those posting are Ukrainians in need of sponsors and British people who want to open their homes to the new arrivals. Continue reading...

Scrolling curated For You Page exposes users to disinformation within 40 minutes, investigation by NewsGuard suggests

By zeroing in on the burgeoning eSports market, the kingdom has added a new layer to its soft power strategy in an attempt to polish its public imageSaudi Arabia has grand plans to become a powerhouse in the world of eSports and gaming.The kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund – a $500bn entity chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – announced a new gaming company in January 2022 with the intention of staking its claim in the booming industry. Continue reading...

A reader writes that they are £1,000 out of pocket and no longer have a working tabletLast year I bought an iPad Pro from the Apple website. After six months of use I noticed that the frame had warped substantially, so I took it to the Apple store in London’s Covent Garden. The staff declared that the problem must have been caused by accidental damage and insisted that I pay a £350 out-of-warranty charge to replace it.I reluctantly paid up, and took the new iPad home, but within two days noticed that it, too, had developed a slight warp. The next day a thick band developed down the middle of the screen, making the iPad unusable. Continue reading...

Top performance, 5G, good camera and long software support ensure cheapest iPhone is worth buyingApple’s cut-price iPhone is back and has been upgraded for 2022, with a faster chip and 5G making it an even better bargain than before.The third-generation iPhone SE costs £419 ($429/A$719) and is the cheapest smartphone Apple sells, priced to compete with myriad mid-range Android devices. Continue reading...