Technology | The Guardian

Profit forecast cut as Christmas supply problems hit products including PlayStation 5Currys has trimmed its annual profit forecast after a shortage of goods ranging from PlayStation 5 consoles and Apple products to hairdryers and TVs resulted in a 5% fall in sales over the peak Christmas period.The UK’s biggest electrical retailer said sales were hit by problems including the global chip shortage, which is affecting the supply of electrical goods including TVs and appliances and the shipping of products. Continue reading...

Suspected Russian hackers leave message warning: ‘Ukrainians … be afraid and expect worse’Ukraine has been hit by a “massive” cyber-attack, with the websites of several government departments including the ministry of foreign affairs and the education ministry knocked out.Officials said it was too early to draw any conclusions but they pointed to a “long record” of Russian cyber assaults against Ukraine, with the attack coming after security talks between Moscow and the US and its allies this week ended in stalemate. Continue reading...

The danger of being one of the world’s most recognisable celebrities is revealed as the Disgraceland podcast profiles the Shake It Off singer. Plus: a conversation with a dominatrixDisgraceland

Subpoenas are an escalation in the committee’s efforts for answers as companies ignored information requestsThe House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol has ordered several social media firms to hand over data relating to the attack, asignificant step toward transparency that could have broader privacy implications.The committee on Thursday subpoenaed Twitter, Meta, Alphabet and Reddit for private messages exchanged on the platforms about the attack aas well as information regarding moderation policies that allowed communities to remain online even as they incited violence in early 2021. Continue reading...

Site will have space for 10,000 UK employees who will work under hybrid workplace modelGoogle has announced a $1bn (£871m) deal to buy the London development Central Saint Giles, calling the move a show of confidence in the return to more office working.The US tech firm currently rents space in the brightly coloured development designed by the architect Renzo Piano, which is located in the centre of the capital, near Oxford Street. Continue reading...

Holmes remains free on bond till September and faces up to 20 years in prison, but experts say she will likely receive far fewerElizabeth Holmes is slated to be sentenced on 26 September after being found guilty of defrauding Theranos investors, according to a court filing on Wednesday.A California jury found Holmes, 37, guilty on four of 11 charges, including three counts of fraud and one count of conspiring to defraud private investors in the blood-testing startup. She remains free on a $500,000 bond while awaiting sentencing. Continue reading...

DMV revisiting prior decision that full self-driving is not subject to its regulations on autonomous vehiclesCalifornia is evaluating whether Tesla’s self-driving tests require regulatory oversight, following “videos showing a dangerous use of that technology” and federal investigations into Tesla vehicle crashes, a state regulator said.The California department of motor vehicles previous said that Tesla’s full self-driving, or FSD, beta requires human intervention and therefore is not subject to its regulations on autonomous vehicles. Continue reading...

Class action lawsuit alleges celebrities and EthereumMax executives made ‘false and misleading statements’The reality TV star Kim Kardashian and boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Jr are among celebrities being sued over their promotion of an alleged “pump and dump” cryptocurrency scheme that investors say caused them to lose money.According to a class action lawsuit filed in a California court, executives of EthereumMax, in collaboration with Kardashian, Mayweather Jr and the basketball player Paul Pierce, sought to enrich themselves by making “false and misleading” statements to investors. Continue reading...

Fresh election in Alabama comes after US official finds company violated labor law in last year’s voteAmazon workers at an Alabama warehouse will get another chance to unionize next month, after a federal labor board set a February date for the rerun election.The fresh vote comes after an official at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that Amazon had violated labor law in the union election held last year and ruled in November that workers must get another chance to vote. Continue reading...

Our endless online accounts should all be protected by impenetrable passwords (but usually aren’t). A centralised manager can be secure and easy

Another non-fungible token TV show has been announced, a possible sign that the way we consume content could be about to changeIf, like me, you spent the first week of the year excitedly hoovering up every last “Best upcoming shows of 2022” list online, I’m afraid I have some bad news. Not one list mentioned GenZeroes, and GenZeroes has the potential to be the most important television series ever made. Or, you know, it might be a steaming bag of turds that is watched by literally zero people on Earth. But, hey, it’s always nice to be positive.Because, just as the television industry is starting to adjust to the popularity of non-linear, streaming viewing habits, GenZeroes represents the next incredible frontier of home entertainment. That’s right, GenZeroes is an NFT (non-fungible token) show. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: before it was banned, Politics For All’s emoji-laden tweets were reaching millions of followers – and the UK government - by manipulating the perverse incentives of social media

The NGO Nana is upending gender norms in conservative Sokoto state, where one in 20 girls finish secondary schoolThe green-and-red Nana Female Mechanic Garage sign is visible from the main road into Sokoto city. Behind its sliding iron gate, Zainab Dayyabu stomps around in heavy work boots and a blue jumpsuit, her hands callused and oily.“I love the job I’m doing,” says the 23-year-old, as she opens the bonnet of a Peugeot van to test its battery. Continue reading...

Platform is not doing enough to tackle spread of falsehoods, claims letter signed by 80 groupsYouTube is a major conduit of online disinformation and misinformation worldwide and is not doing enough to tackle the spread of falsehoods on its platform, according to a global coalition of factchecking organisations.A letter signed by more than 80 groups, including Full Fact in the UK and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker, says the video platform is hosting content by groups including Doctors for the Truth, which spread Covid misinformation, and videos supporting the “fraud” narrative during the US presidential election. Continue reading...

Josh Wardle developed game to play with his partner – and now more than 2m others have joined inWordle, a deceptively simple online word puzzle, has had a meteoric rise since its launch last autumn, from 90 daily players in November to 300,000 at the beginning of January, to 2 million last weekend. But, for its creator, the game’s rapid success has resulted in as much anxiety as excitement.The game has become an unexpected grassroots hit for Josh Wardle, who developed it for his puzzle-loving partner. The pair played it for fun on their sofa, and other users slowly began to join them. Continue reading...

From ‘bubble barriers’ to floating drones, a host of new projects aim to stop plastic pollution before it ever reaches the oceanThe Great Bubble Barrier is just that – a wall of bubbles. It gurgles across the water in a diagonal screen, pushing plastic to one side while allowing fish and other wildlife to pass unharmed.The technology, created by a Dutch firm and already being used in Amsterdam, is being trialled in the Douro River in Porto, Portugal, as part of the EU-supported Maelstrom (marine litter sustainable removal and management) project. Continue reading...

There’s no surer way to date yourself than the way you use your mobile. From leaving voicemails to leaving voice notes, each generation has a different etiquetteA lot of people, particularly at this self-improvement stage of the year, spend a great deal of time worrying about what makes them look old. Is it the bags under the eyes or the invisible triceps? This is daft, since, if you have a ring light or – better yet – are willing to pretend that your camera isn’t working, no one needs to know what you really look like unless they live with you (and those people have a fair idea already). The giveaway now is how you use your phone. You can absolutely carbon-date yourself in a single exchange.If you leave voicemail, that makes you a boomer, according to assorted experts. If you send a voice note, you are (spiritually, at least) a millennial, or even generation Z. This makes no sense, since, to your interlocutor, these are two identical experiences: an annoying taped message that they are burdened with listening to. However, if you query the rules, that puts you back in boomer territory.Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Romance scams robbed Britons of nearly £100m last year. Thanks to online dating and the pandemic, these cruel crimes are more sophisticated and prevalent than everIn February 2019, Anna, a finance professional in her 50s, joined the dating website Zoosk. She had been single for four years, recovering from an incredibly difficult, abusive marriage. “I was finally ready to meet someone,” she says.So, when she met Andrew, a handsome Bulgarian food importer living in London, she was thrilled. The pair were soon spending hours talking on the phone each day. Anna was smitten. “He showered me with love and affection,” she says. “If you imagine candy floss, I was the stick and he was the sugar wrapped around me. I felt as though I was floating.” Continue reading...

Analysis: given endemic online toxicity, it is hard to see how VR worlds can be made pleasant and safe

A new breed of supermarkets means the days of queues, checkouts and shoplifting are numbered. But what else will we lose when no-transaction shopping becomes the norm?Welcome to the supermarkets of the future. They may look and feel like the supermarkets we are all used to – and stock the same bread, butter and bananas – but these shops are now fitted out with more than £1m of the latest technology that their bosses promise will put an end to our biggest frustration (queueing) and our most persistent crime (shoplifting).Jill French, a legal secretary in her 30s, wearing a sharp navy suit and matching beret, has just left a Tesco Express on London’s Holborn Viaduct empty-handed. It’s coming up to 6.30pm on a Thursday and, like dozens of others, French has popped in for a few essentials on her way home. “I just went in to grab pasta, milk and some broccoli,” she says. “But there was such a queue I got frustrated and walked out.” Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch, PC; Ghost Time Games

Tokyo-listed shares in Japanese group rise after it shows off second concept vehicleSony has revealed plans to start an electric car company, making it the latest electronics manufacturer to target the automotive sector.The Japanese tech firm is “exploring a commercial launch” of electric vehicles, and will launch a new company, Sony Mobility Inc, in the spring, its chairman and president, Kenichiro Yoshida, told a news conference before the Consumer Electronics Show in the US. Continue reading...

Experts say the fraud charges could open up tech industry to further scrutiny, making startups tread more carefullyTheranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty on Monday of fraud, concluding a high-profile trial that captivated Silicon Valley and chronicled the missteps of the now-defunct blood testing startup.After seven days of deliberation, the jury in San Jose, California, convicted Holmes on four charges: one count of conspiracy to defraud investors, and three counts of wire fraud against investors. It acquitted her on three charges, including one conspiracy to defraud patients and two charges related to patients who received inaccurate test results. It remained deadlocked on three remaining charges. Continue reading...

Elon Musk and Tesla must consider human rights in the Chinese region or risk being complicit, says Human Rights WatchTesla has opened a new showroom in the capital of Xinjiang, a region at the heart of years-long campaign by Chinese authorities of repression and assimilation against the Uyghur people.Tesla announced the opening in Urumqi with a Weibo post on 31 December saying: “On the last day of 2021, we meet in Xinjiang. In 2022 let us together launch Xinjiang on its electric journey!” Continue reading...

The trial of CEO Elizabeth Holmes saw several former employees, board directors and even Holmes herself testifyElizabeth Holmes, the founder of blood testing company Theranos, was found guilty of four charges of fraud on Monday, ending a closely followed saga that could have major implications for the tech world.Over the course of several months, federal prosecutors laid out a case to the jury that Holmes knowingly scammed investors and patients, artificially inflating the value of Theranos and lying about the capabilities of its technology. Continue reading...

Former senior officer says unsolved hack of MoD training school systems did not succeed but still had costsA cyber-attack on the UK’s Defence Academy caused “significant” damage, a retired high-ranking officer has revealed.Air Marshal Edward Stringer, who left the armed forces in August, told Sky News the attack, which was discovered in March 2021, meant the Defence Academy was forced to rebuild its network. Continue reading...

Smoother skin, slimmer faces, plumper lips … how unattainable ideals are harming young usersPopping a beautifying filter on the TikTok video she was filming seemed harmless to Mia. It made it look as though she had done her makeup, took away the hint of a double chin that always bothered her, and gently altered her bone structure to make her just that bit closer to perfect.After a while, using filters on videos became second nature – until she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror one day and realised, to her horror, she no longer recognised her own face. Continue reading...

To find out why Finland is the happiest place in the world, the photographer visited a steam room in HelsinkiIn 2019, the UN named Finland the happiest place in the world, and Manuel Vazquez and journalist Ana Alfageme were sent by a Spanish magazine to find out why. Saunas are a big part of life there; the country has more than 2 million in residential and public settings. The pair agreed that they’d be good places to find locals to interview.This photo was taken on a sub-zero November day, when only six hours of light can be expected. The pair had already tried out a swanky coastal sauna. “I didn’t think I’d be able to do it,” Vazquez laughs. “But it really does liberate the endorphins. It’s exhilarating.” Next, Vazquez wanted to seek out a more authentic, traditional version that used wood. He had heard of a particularly popular one in the Helsinki neighbourhood of Kallio. “In winter, the practice is to alternate between the sauna and a body of water, like a lake or the sea,” he says. “But because this sauna is in the city, patrons just go and sit on the icy street.” Continue reading...

The first of a series on how digital technologies shape our thoughts, emotions and interior livesIn March 2020, as the Covid pandemic took hold, the language learning app Duolingo reported double its usual number of sign-ups. Stuck inside under lockdown orders, people had time on their hands and were looking for ways to occupy it.It wasn’t long before I joined its 500 million users in an attempt to recapture the feeling of learning Portuguese during three months spent in Brazil several years ago: that heady thrill of realising I had conveyed the meaning I meant to, the strange alchemy of suddenly understanding what people around me were saying. Could an app give me that? Continue reading...

The biggest moments of a year when shares rallied to record levels and deal-making soared

Ahmad Fawad Yusufi’s family wants $4m in aid from Uber and better pay for its drivers. The company said he was logged off when he was killedMohammad Dawood Mommand was at home in Sacramento, California, when he received a call that left him in shock and unable to stand. Ahmad Fawad Yusufi, a cousin who he considered like a brother, had been shot and killed in San Francisco, where he worked as an Uber driver.Yusufi, 31, was an Afghan immigrant and father of three who came to the US on a special visa after serving as a translator for the US military. Family and gig worker organizers say Yusufi was getting some rest in his car between driving shifts when someone attempted to steal his wallet and shot him to death. Continue reading...

The child had asked the Echo smart speaker for a challenge, prompting her mother to post the response on TwitterVirtual assistants can set timers for people, play music, control smart home devices, respond to voice commands and set up reminders. As of Sunday, they have also proven their ability to challenge children to lethal dares.Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, recently advised a 10-year-old girl to touch a penny to a live plug socket after she asked the Echo smart speaker for a challenge. Continue reading...

Turning invasive plants into a force for good and powering healthcare with solar – here are three of the 2022 nomineesFrom a solar-powered crib that treats jaundiced babies to fibre made from water hyacinth that absorbs oil spills, innovators from nine African countries have been shortlisted for the Royal Academy of Engineering’s 2022 Africa prize.This year half of the shortlist of 16 are women, and for the first time it includes Togolese and Congolese inventors. The entrepreneurs will undergo eight months of business training and mentoring before a winner is chosen, who will receive £25,000, and three runners-up, who win £10,000 each. All the projects are sustainable solutions to issues such as access to healthcare, farming resilience, reducing waste, and energy efficiency. The Guardian spoke to three of the shortlisted candidates. Continue reading...

With emulators available even on smartphones, dipping into your playing past is easier than everNick Bowman gestures to the old-fashioned gaming consoles littering his desk.“Whenever I am having kind of a crappy day, I pull out the Nintendo,” he says, pointing. “That’s a licensed one. I also have a Raspberry Pi that I have all my emulators on. [And] I have the original Pokemon Red on my smartphone.” Continue reading...

Figure for world’s richest person and Tesla CEO could be a record for an individualElon Musk, the world’s richest person and the chief executive of the electric car company Tesla, has said he will pay more than $11bn in tax this year – which could be a record amount of annual tax paid by a single person.Musk, who was earlier this year accused of paying zero federal taxes in 2018 despite sitting on an estimated $243bn (£185bn), said he would pay the unusually high tax bill this year after the sale of millions of Tesla shares. Continue reading...

From a trans LA showdown to a pastoral Nintendo game, Guardian critics have the yuletide covered“I know what I’m going to do tomorrow, and the next day, and the next year, and the year after that.” The confident announcement of James Stewart early in It’s a Wonderful Life would not be shared by the characters of Tangerine, another festive treat that begins on a dicey Christmas Eve. For LA trans sex workers Sin-Dee and Alexandra, even the next 10 minutes are likely to be unpredictable. All they do know is that, having learned Sin-Dee’s boyfriend is cheating on her, a wrong must now be righted. That Sean Baker’s 2015 film was shot on iPhones is not the only break with Christmas movie tradition. But the meaning and message? As joyful as anything in cinema: no one is a failure who has friends. Danny Leigh Continue reading...

Social media companies’ algorithms enable the spread of extremism and social chaos. The case for regulating them is clearIn his 2021 Reith lectures, the third episode of which airs tonight, the artificial intelligence researcher Stuart Russell takes up the idea of a near-future AI that is so ruthlessly intelligent that it might pose an existential threat to humanity. A machine we create that might destroy us all.This has long been a popular topic with researchers and the press. But we believe an existential threat from AI is both unlikely and in any case far off, given the current state of the technology. However, the recent development of powerful, but far smaller-scale, AI systems has had a significant effect on the world already, and the use of existing AI poses serious economic and social challenges. These are not distant, but immediate, and must be addressed.Devdatt Dubhashi is professor of data science and AI at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. Shalom Lappin is professor of natural language processing at Queen Mary University of London, director of the Centre for Linguistic Theory and Studies in Probability at the University of Gothenburg, and emeritus professor of computational linguistics at King’s College London. Continue reading...

Critics of non-fungible tokens say they are symptomatic of unsustainable digital gold rushThe global market for non-fungible tokens hit $22bn (£16.5bn) this year as the craze for collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and Matrix avatars turned digital images into major investment assets.NFTs have drawn from veteran investors similar warnings to those issued about cryptocurrencies: that they are symptomatic of an unsustainable, digital gold rush. NFTs confer ownership of a unique digital item – whether a piece of virtual art by Damien Hirst or a jacket to be worn in the metaverse – upon someone, even if that item can be easily copied. Ownership is recorded on a digital, decentralised ledger known as a blockchain. Continue reading...

Whether socialising with friends or completing a difficult task, a ping on your phone can destroy the moment. It is time to address the constant stream of interruptionsJoanie (not her real name), a clinical psychologist who lives in London, has three work laptops. This is not uncommon when you’re spread across different NHS services. Sometimes, she feels like the 1980s synth supremo Paul Hardcastle, who used to dart between keyboards when performing on Top of the Pops. Except that he wasn’t always rudely interrupted by random notifications. “When I log on to one laptop,” she says, “this automatic thing comes on called Netpresenter player. It’s a ticker tape, like one of those bus-stop ads that keeps moving.”She quits it, because she needs to concentrate on writing up notes before her next meeting. But it keeps coming back with annoying notifications. “I’ve been in the middle of a session and it’s started playing music and a video – usually things like, ‘Don’t forget to wash your hands properly’, or, ‘Hey, we’re all meeting for a webinar in half an hour about staff wellbeing.’” Joanie says her wellbeing would improve if it was easier to get her work done. Continue reading...

Deepfakes are the latest moral danger from the fast-moving world of tech. But haven’t we seen it all before?On the night of Thursday 3 September 1998, a middle-aged community college professor with a history of heart attacks passed out at the wheel of his car on a busy US highway. The car drifted across the lanes and into the rush of oncoming traffic. The collision was so powerful it thrust the engine of the professor’s car into the front seats. Miraculously, he survived, and no one else was seriously injured. He recovered from a broken ankle and wrist and left hospital. A month later, he was back there with a pain in his leg – a clot that might or might not have been triggered by the accident. Next, his body swelled up to twice its size with fluid, so he looked like a balloon you could prick with a needle and burst. His wife and young children watched as his miraculous survival turned to a sudden worsening of his underlying heart disease. By April 1999 he was dead.Just over two decades later his son, Michael Grothaus, sat at his computer watching a video of his father, healthy and wearing a yellow T-shirt, playing with a smartphone that was invented many years after his death. He was enjoying himself, recording the sun-dappled park around him. Then he turned towards the screen and smiled benignly at his son from behind his unmistakeable bushy eyebrows. Continue reading...

Amazon Web Services cloud faces internet connectivity issues in two regions on the US West CoastAmazon’s cloud service, Amazon Web Services, briefly faced internet connectivity problems in two regions on the US West Coast on Wednesday, marking the second time in less than two weeks that the service was disturbed.AWS, which is a public cloud service provider, supports online infrastructures of many companies, including Netflix. Continue reading...

Out of Office, a book by Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen, explores the toxicity of productivity culture and why now is the best moment for changeEver wonder why, with every new piece of so-called productivity enhancing technology we adopt, we just end up with more, not less work? Slack was supposed to get rid of email – only now we find time to email and reply to our co-workers on Slack. Email was supposed to free us from reading through lengthy paper documents everyday, but we now email ourselves the pdfs home to read in the quiet hours after work. And smart phones? Don’t even get me started. A lot of us find ourselves replying to our bosses on the bus, while putting our kids to sleep, or even, God forbid, on the toilet.Out of Office, a new book by journalists Charlie Wartzel and Anne Helen Petersen, explores why productivity culture has been so successful at making us working more, not less. And with millions either quitting their jobs or having to work from home, they ask how we can capitalize on this moment for the good of workers, not our bosses. Continue reading...

From Forza Horizon 5’s pure driving thrills to the brain-scrambling fun of Pyschonauts 2 and Resident Evil Village’s massive vampires, here are the Xbox Series S/X must-havesIn order to appease a fanbase on the brink of disillusion, 343 Industries has abandoned some of the narrative extravagances from Halo 5 and built an unapologetically gung-ho sci-fi blaster with Master Chief doing what he does best: running about blasting aliens with cool guns. The open worlds and new grappling gun add variety and the standalone multiplayer is a frenetic competitor to the Battle Royale big fish, but this is classic Halo fare.

Publication cites Tesla boss’s influence ‘for good or ill’, but accolade is criticised over his views on tax, unions and CovidTime magazine’s decision to make Tesla billionaire Elon Musk its person of the year for 2021 has been criticised because of his attitude to tax, opposition to unions and playing down the dangers of Covid.Musk, who is also the founder and chief executive of space exploration company SpaceX, recently passed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the world’s wealthiest person as the rising price of Tesla shares pushed his net worth to around $300bn (£227bn). Continue reading...

State government employees advised to change passwords and monitor bank accounts after massive payroll data breachRecords including the name, tax file number and banking details of almost 80,000 South Australian government employees may have been stolen in a cyber-attack, with workers advised to assume their personal information has been stolen.The South Australian treasurer, Rob Lucas, first disclosed on Friday that records of 38,000 government employees had been stolen in a cyber-attack, but confirmed the extent of the data breach on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Nuclear Biscuit, a simulated experience, allows US officials to wargame a missile attack and see the devastating consequences of their choicesIt became clear that things had gone terribly awry on this particular day when I saw that the most moderate option on the desk in front of me involved killing at least five million people.I could kill up to 45 million if I chose the more comprehensive of the alternatives laid out on three pieces of paper, but it was hard to focus on the details because there were people shouting at me through my earpiece and from the screens in front of me. Continue reading...

Thea-Mai Baumann had used the account for more than a decade but it suddenly vanished, taking all her work with itAn Instagram user with the handle @metaverse last month found herself blocked from her account, which featured a decade of her life and work – after parent company Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta.On 28 October, Facebook, which owns Instagram, kept the social media platform Facebook so named but changed its umbrella corporate name to Meta – signaling an effort to reflect the virtual world that the tech giant considers the future of the internet. Continue reading...

Vacuum cleaner maker claims large parts of business are impossible to carry out from home

From the very first game on the console to a lonely space-rodent and a rejuvenated Spider-Man, these are our best picks for the PS5One of the most quietly significant games of the 00s has been transformed here into a visually incredible, endlessly rewarding dark fantasy. Make your way through imposing medieval castles, a horrendous prison tower and foul swamps using a sword, shield, wand and whatever else you can scavenge to defend yourself against what you find there. This game can be brutal and unforgiving – progress is hard-won, the combat is exciting and consequential, and the bosses are legendary – but you can always summon other players to help you, and if you can engage with its challenge, this is a game you’ll never forget. Continue reading...

Technology industry issues warning before MPs and peers publish report on online safety billIntroducing criminal sanctions for tech executives in the online safety bill could be copied by non-democratic regimes, the industry has claimed before an influential report this week.A joint committee of MPs and peers scrutinising the bill will publish its findings on Tuesday after the culture secretary promised to accelerate provisions for criminal liability for senior managers. Continue reading...