Technology | The Guardian

From Office Space to the Rakes’ 22 Grand Job, Guardian critics suggest culture to cope with the pressure, politics and crushing ennui of earning a livingFashions in workplace design have changed since Office Space. When Mike Judge released his cult comedy of unhappy software programmers in 1999 – two years before Ricky Gervais launched The Office – his characters were still penned up in cubicles. The film flopped, but it would be nice to think that on some subliminal level it hastened the end of that particular era. Of course, what followed – hot-desks and the open-plan – was just as dreadful. But that much was in keeping with what Judge told us all along. A wilful printer can be destroyed. The rest of it? The pass-agg line manager? The presenteeism and paranoia? The hatefully chipper co-worker diagnosing a “case of the Mondays”? All that is eternal. You can’t change the office, Office Space said. You can only leave it. Danny Leigh Continue reading...

Consumers were unable to book deliveries or amend existing orders in outage that started on SaturdayTesco’s website and app are up and running again after a hack, which left thousands of customers unable to shop online at the weekend.The outage, which meant customers were unable to unable to book deliveries or amend existing orders, began on Saturday morning and continued into Sunday. Continue reading...

We were left paying £500 a month to lease the car but couldn’t use it because a part had not arrivedIn May we accidentally backed our Tesla Model 3 into a wall. No other car was involved and it seemingly caused minimal damage. It was travelling at less than 5mph.I was advised to take it to Werren’s Bedford, a Tesla-approved bodyshop recommended by the manufacturer’s Milton Keynes service centre and approved by my car insurer, Admiral. Continue reading...

Beautiful, well-made design does not hide the poor performance and battery life at this priceMicrosoft’s smallest tablet PC gets Windows 11, newer chips and a small price cut but really needed more to make it worth the investment.The Surface Go 3 has a tempting starting price of £369 ($399/A$629) – £30 less than its predecessor – but the cheapest model is saddled with a small amount of slow speed storage, making the mid-range 128GB model the real starting point, and it comes in at £499. Neither comes with the £99 keyboard, which is essential for such a machine. Still, it is Microsoft’s cheapest machine behind the £549 Surface Laptop Go. Continue reading...

MPs and peers to pick brain of former Facebook employee in connection with draft online safety billFrances Haugen brings her searing assessment of Facebook to Westminster on Monday with an appearance at the joint committee scrutinising the draft online safety bill.The former facebook employee has provoked an onslaught of criticism of Mark Zuckerberg’s company by releasing tens of thousands of internal Facebook documents outlining the firm’s failure to keep harmful content off its platforms (as well as its eponymous social network, Facebook owns Instagram, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp). She has already testified to US senators this month at a hearing in which she accused the company of putting “astronomical profits before people”. Continue reading...

Whistleblower and critic of Mark Zuckerberg will give evidence to MPs scrutinising online safety billThe Facebook whistleblower is to give evidence to MPs and peers scrutinising the online safety bill, amid calls for a toughening up of the landmark legislation.Frances Haugen has triggered a deep crisis at Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire after she released tens of thousands of internal documents detailing the company’s failure to keep its users safe from harmful content. On Monday Haugen, 37, will testify in person at the joint committee scrutinising the draft online safety bill, a piece of legislation that places a duty of care on social media companies to protect users – with the threat of substantial fines if they fail to do so.In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org. Continue reading...

Social media giant teams up with newswire AAP to push videos encouraging voters to critically examine factsFacebook and the Australian Associated Press newswire service will roll out “check the facts” videos over the next month as the social media giant prepares for a federal election campaign that could be filled with misinformation and disinformation.The videos, to be pushed in Australia on the Facebook and Instagram platforms until 24 November, will encourage people to critically examine information they are presented with and improve their overall media literacy. AAP will also provide material on how to identify misinformation. Continue reading...

The push for online regulation risks absolving the right of responsibility for the toxicity they continually stokeEvery time a dramatic, unforeseen political event happens, there follows a left-field fixation that some out-of-control technology created it. Whenever this fear about big tech comes around we are told that something new, even more toxic, has infiltrated our public discourse, triggering hatred towards politicians and public figures, conspiracy theories about Covid and even major political events like Brexit. The concern over anonymity online becomes a particular worry – as if ending it will somehow, like throwing a blanket at a raging house fire, subdue our fevered state.You may remember that during the summer’s onslaught of racist abuse towards black players in the England football team, instead of reckoning with the fact that racism still haunts this country, we busied ourselves with bluster about how “cowards” online would be silenced if we only just demanded they identify themselves. Continue reading...

Consumers unable to book or amend deliveries after ‘attempt made to interfere with systems’Tesco has been hit by hackers, leaving thousands of frustrated shoppers unable to buy groceries online at Britain’s biggest supermarket.The outage leaves its grocery website and app down for a second day, with people unable to book deliveries or amend existing orders. Tesco receives 1.3m online orders every week. Continue reading...

Vice-president of content policy believes government regulation can ‘establish standards all companies should meet’The tech industry “needs regulation” because it should not be left to make the rules on issues including harmful online content on its own, a Facebook executive has said.Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice-president of content policy, believes that “government regulation can establish standards all companies should meet”. Continue reading...

Materials provided by Frances Haugen to media outlets shine light on how company apparently stumbled into 6 JanuaryAs extremist supporters of Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol on 6 January, battling police and forcing lawmakers into hiding, an insurrection of a different kind was taking place inside the world’s largest social media company.Thousands of miles away, in California, Facebook engineers were racing to tweak internal controls to slow the spread of misinformation and content likely to incite further violence. Continue reading...

‘The poverty I saw really shocked me, but also the people I saw were happy, they were friendly, they were sharing’The trip Hossein Fatemi made to Somalia in 2011, on assignment for an Iranian organisation, marked a turning point in his career. The New York-based photojournalist had covered many serious situations, but what he saw in Mogadishu – “thousands of children dying in desert hospitals, without food or water, without anything” – is something, he says, that he will never forget.Fatemi returned to east Africa the following year with a group of Iranian photographers to focus on the lives of the refugees fleeing not only the conflict but also the drought and the flooding. He shot only on his phone because it puts people at ease. “Most of my colleagues would not risk relying solely on their phones,” he says, “but it gave me more flexibility and lent a more natural feel to the images.” Continue reading...

Company under fire as news reports detail spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories even as staff raised concernsFacebook faced mounting pressure on Friday after a new whistleblower accused it of knowingly hosting hate speech and illegal activity, even as leaked documents shed further light on how the company failed to heed internal concerns over election misinformation.Allegations by the new whistleblower, who spoke to the Washington Post, were reportedly contained in a complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US agency that handles regulation to protect investors in publicly traded companies. Continue reading...

Company reveals figures, promised in 2019, as ride-hailing companies face growing safety scrutinyThe ride-hailing app Lyft received more than 4,000 reports of sexual assaults during rides from 2017 to 2019, the company revealed in a new report, including 1,800 reports in 2019 alone.Lyft revealed the numbers on Thursday, after having pledged in 2019 to do so. In its report, the company said the number of sexual assault reports collected through its app had risen from 1,096 in 2017 to 1,255 in 2018 and 1,807 in 2019.Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 802 9999. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html Continue reading...

Donald Trump’s plans to launch a platform are good news for Mark Zuckerberg, who’ll be busy prebutting the next damning exposé of his companyBy rights, these should really be what we might euphemise as Donald Trump’s “hidden years”. Though he might not have been expected to descend immediately to full late-era Howard Hughes – four-inch fingernails and tissue boxes on his feet – the aesthetics of this third act in Trump’s American life felt promisingly tragicomic.The 45th president would live out an excruciatingly undignified post-office twilight down at Mar-a-Lago, railing like some 19th-hole Lear about his lost kingdom, shuffling his sad buffet tray of trans fats along the line in the communal restaurants of his home/tacky-members’-club hybrid, and grabbing the mic at weddings held on the premises to assure bemused guests that he was days, maybe even hours, away from securing gamechanging recounts in this or that state.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

23 October 1871: Babbage’s calculating machines are seen as the forerunners of modern programmable computersThe death is announced of Mr Charles Babbage, who has long held high rank among the mathematicians of the day. He was born on 26 December 1792, and having been privately educated, proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge where he took his BA degree in 1814; but, curiously enough, his name does not appear in the mathematical tripos. In the course of his mathematical studies he found fault with the logarithmic tables then in use as being defective and unfaithful; and in order to improve them visited the various centres of machine labour in England and on the continent, and on his return directed the construction of a “difference engine” for the use of the government.Another result of this tour was the production of his work on the Economy of Manufactures. By 1833 a portion of his machine (popularly known as “the calculating machine”) was prepared, and its operations were entirely successful. It was, however, never completed. He next prepared his Table of Logarithms of the Natural Numbers from 1 to 108,000, a work which was so highly esteemed that it was very soon afterwards translated into almost all the European languages. Continue reading...

Danny Robins returns to examine listeners’ freaky real-life tales. Plus: Radiolab pays homage to the cassette tape, and Home/Front tells the story of an unusual anti-war activistUncanny

Social media firm announces deal after long-running battle with national and regional newspapersFrance has hailed a victory in its long-running quest for fairer action from tech companies after Facebook reached an agreement with a group of national and regional newspapers to pay for content shared by its users.Facebook on Thursday announced a licensing agreement with the APIG alliance of French national and regional newspapers, which includes Le Parisien and Ouest-France as well as smaller titles. It said this meant “people on Facebook will be able to continue uploading and sharing news stories freely amongst their communities, whilst also ensuring that the copyright of our publishing partners is protected”. Continue reading...

Slew of walkouts by tech workers, unthinkable mere years ago, shows workers ‘now understand their labor power’, expert saysEmployees at Netflix halted work on Wednesday and staged a protest outside the company’s Los Gatos, California, headquarters to condemn the streaming platform’s handling of complaints against Dave Chappelle’s new special.The actions – which hundreds participated in – are the latest in a string of highly visible organizing efforts in the tech sector, as workers increasingly take their grievances about company policies and decisions public. Continue reading...

After news broke of the troubled social media company planning to rebrand its toxic image, ideas flew fast and plentifulFacebook is reportedly preparing to unveil a new name as the company seeks to rebrand, and the internet has already come through with some pointed suggestions.The plans, first reported by the Verge on Tuesday, come at a time of upheaval for the company. In the last few months alone, Facebook has been served with a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission, was the subject of a congressional hearing after a whistleblower revealed worrying internal practices at the company, and is facing a walkout of moderators over working conditions. Continue reading...

Account behind the advert has been suspended after appearing on the platform’s Stories feed

New tweaks, including ability to respond to or develop other users’ ideas pins, come amid public outcry over social media failingsPinterest will offer users the chance to riff on Jennifer Lopez’s Halloween costume as it launches new products to emphasise its appeal to “emotional wellbeing” amid a storm of negative publicity surrounding social media firms.The digital pinboard business is introducing a “Takes” product that allows users to respond to someone else’s ideas pin – or video post – with their own version, whether it is trying out a fellow user’s food recipe or replicating an artist’s sketch. The US company is launching the service with a Lopez idea pin, where the music star invites people to post their “killer Halloween costume”. Continue reading...

Can the social media giant rebrand itself without alienating users? Here are five suggestionsFacebook’s proposed rebrand comes at a crucial time for the company. On one hand, Mark Zuckerberg’s increasing focus on the “metaverse” seems to hint that he has ambitions far beyond simply destroying every non-Facebook industry on the planet. But at the same time, he also has to unveil this new unstoppable machine of death without scaring off too many regular Facebook users. How will he be able to manage such an impossible highwire act? Here are some suggestions. Continue reading...

Most of world’s richest person’s fortune so far has come from electric car company TeslaElon Musk, the world’s richest person, with an estimated $241bn fortune, could become the first trillionaire, an investment bank has predicted.Analysts at Morgan Stanley forecast that Musk, who has made most of his wealth from the electric car company Tesla, could make much more money from his fledgling space exploration business SpaceX. Continue reading...

Up for discussion in the Guardian tech newsletter: the problem with the streaming company’s outlandish claims

Exclusive: health secretary signs up to hi-tech schemes countering health disparities and reflecting minority ethnic groups’ dataArtificial intelligence is to be used to tackle racial inequalities in the NHS under government plans to “level up” healthcare.

Top new Androids have bigger cameras, Tensor processor and five years of supportGoogle has finally launched its flagship Pixel 6 smartphones as it aims to beat competitors on camera and performance while undercutting them on price.Previewed by Google in August, the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are the Android-maker’s attempt to compete with Apple and Samsung at the high end of the market after disappointing results with its previous mid-range entries. Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch; Mercury Steam/Nintendo

I leave the Lords with a heavy heart, as ministers kowtow to new and unaccountable forms of power

After endless attempts to either repair or replace the broken screen, the company decided my warranty had now elapsedI bought a £2,000 8K TV from Richer Sounds in August last year but just short of its first birthday the screen stopped working. I reported it to Richer Sounds immediately who said it has to be dealt with by Samsung as it had happened within the first year, despite the store offering a six-year warranty.I went through a long stream of emails and phone calls back and forth as Samsung tried to troubleshoot the problem. It insisted I supply a video of the TV not working, which I did. After many, many back and forths it agreed to send out an engineer, but the contractor told me I had to pay a £100 callout charge as the TV was now out of warranty. Continue reading...

A Wall Street Journal report revealed execs approached the CEO in 2008 about flirtatious emails to a female midlevel stafferBill Gates was allegedly advised in 2008 by executives at the company to halt inappropriate communication with a female employee, according to a new report.The claims, published by the Wall Street Journal, are the latest to shed light on potential misconduct by Gates while he was still working at Microsoft. The Wall Street Journal had previously revealed claims Gates left the company’s board amid an investigation into a past affair with a staffer. Continue reading...

Privacy campaigners raise concerns after nine schools in North Ayrshire scan faces of pupils to take paymentsThe Information Commissioner’s Office is to intervene over concerns about the use of facial recognition technology on pupils queueing for lunch in school canteens in the UK.Nine schools in North Ayrshire began taking payments for school lunches this week by scanning the faces of their pupils, according to a report in the Financial Times. More schools are expected to follow. Continue reading...

High-end MacBooks get big redesign with more ports, better screens and M1 Pro and Max chipsApple has announced new third-generation AirPods and its much-anticipated new MacBook Pro laptops, with new screens and high-end M1 Pro and M1 Max chips.During a livestreamed event on Monday, the Apple chief executive, Tim Cook, unveiled the redesigned Bluetooth earbuds and the first of the company’s revamped high-end computers as it continues its switch from Intel to chips of its own design. Continue reading...

Social network says it wants to ensure virtual world is built responsiblyFacebook is creating 10,000 jobs in the EU as part of its push to build a virtual world for its users.The company has trumpeted the “metaverse” as the next big phase of growth for large tech companies and recently announced a $50m (£36m) investment programme to ensure that this metaworld is built “responsibly”. Continue reading...

The world’s bestselling video game series combined reverence of US cinema with satire of nihilistic capitalism. But in a post-Trump world, what does GTA have left to say?In 2013, then-poet, now Booker prize finalist Patricia Lockwood tweeted at the Paris Review: “So is Paris any good or not” The tweet, which went viral, was funny on a number of levels, but particularly its suggestion that anyone might venture to assess the qualities of an entire city. The magazine responded in a blogpost titled The Paris Review reviews Paris (the verdict? “It’s pretty good!”), but the absurdity of the premise was acknowledged in the brisk, tongue-in-cheek appraisal. To review a shimmering city, across all its multitudinous material and social vectors – its traffic systems and sewerage networks, its job prospects and police attitudes, its air pollution and book clubs, its art galleries and vermin infestations – is obviously preposterous.Still, this has never stopped critics from attempting to review the Grand Theft Auto video games holistically, despite the fact each one contains similar multitudes to the American metropolises from which they borrow their settings. These are simplified and flattened recreations of human cities, of course, but each is sufficiently complex to invite a range of critical lenses. Take your pick: architectural or topographical? Sociological or literary? Cinematic or satirical? Do you evaluate the handling of the cars, or the music played by the game’s various radio stations? The quality of the light in a digital sunrise, or the strength of the jokes in Ricky Gervais’ virtual stand-up sets? Each approach presents a different vista, a new text, an alternate proposition. The idea of a full and rounded appraisal of games these enormous and multifaceted is not only laughable, but frankly exhausting. Continue reading...

Fourteen-year-old was bundled into car in Bradford by gang who wanted £10,000 ransom, court heardA schoolboy who was thought to have made money trading in bitcoin was kidnapped by a gang who demanded £10,000 for his safe return, a court heard.The 14-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was confronted outside a takeaway in Bradford in May and bundled into a car. Continue reading...

As Succession returns to our screens, Guardian critics offer artists’ varied takes on the seductive and corruptive nature of excessive richesHell hath no fury like a pop icon scorned, and nobody does indignant financial rage better than Rihanna on the impeccable Bitch Better Have My Money. Hummed under the breath of many a freelancer drafting their 14th polite chase for payment, its playful trap beat enlaces a tale of dodgy accountant exploitation with a shot of chest-puffing braggadocio: “Don’t act like you forgot, I call the shots.” Whether you are negotiating a pay rise or cajoling yourself into another day’s hard grind, it’s all the encouragement you need to stalk into that office and demand what is yours. Jenessa Williams Continue reading...

Parrish said she has been very vocal on the movement and that her firing ‘feels very much like retaliation’Apple has fired one of the leaders of #AppleToo, an employee movement organized in response to alleged patterns of discrimination, racism and sexism at the company.The tech company terminated Janneke Parrish, a program manager on Apple Maps, for “non-compliance” after she deleted personal files from her work device – including apps such as Google Drive, Robinhood and Pokémon Go – amid an internal investigation. Continue reading...

With his new animation, the Oscar-winning documentary maker – and former VR cynic – is exploring how the technology might revolutionise the way we experience cinema“We would have to build a car, that’s the only way it would work,” says Asif Kapadia, brainstorming how to recreate the unforgettable opening passage of his movie Diego Maradona, in virtual reality. “You know what an LED lightbox is? It’s the new version of green screen, a wall of tiny little lights, thousands of them. So you create whatever you want, you put it on that wall, and it projects. We’d have to take every location of Naples in the 80s, put that on a light box, build a car, then put us in the car driving so that when you look out of the window you see Naples. I mean, it would be great. But you’d have to build every environment and that …” he whispers, “is why it’s so expensive.”Over the course of the pandemic, Kapadia has been keeping busy. He directed a miniseries on the subject of mental health starring Oprah and Prince Harry, and a history of music in the year 1971 inspired by David Hepworth’s hit book. He produced an Indian drama series for Amazon about a shaman on the run who joins forces with a local cop. He’s building up to his next “big doc thing”, a story he says is to do with space travel, confronts “all the mad shit going on right now” and means he’s “going fully dystopian”. He has also made a film showing at the London film festival (LFF) right now; a VR short about Laika, the first earthling to orbit Earth. Continue reading...

Professor of negotiation and conflict management says recent advances mean techniques will be used moreInternational diplomacy has traditionally relied on bargaining power, covert channels of communication and personal chemistry between leaders. But a new era is upon us in which the dispassionate insights of AI algorithms and mathematical techniques such as game theory will play a growing role in deals struck between nations, according to the co-founder of the world’s first centre for science in diplomacy.Michael Ambühl, a professor of negotiation and conflict management and former chief Swiss-EU negotiator, said recent advances in AI and machine learning mean that these technologies now have a meaningful part to play in international diplomacy, including at the Cop26 summit starting later this month and in post-Brexit deals on trade and immigration. Continue reading...

New design and 5G updates modular smartphone but camera not as good as some cheaper rivalsThe most ethical, repairable smartphone you can buy is back with a new model, this time with 5G and a fresh look but a weak camera.The new Fairphone 4 costs £499 from the Dutch cooperative of the same name and continues the mission to make phones from materials sourced as ethically as possible that you can take apart and fix without an electrical engineering degree.Screen: 6.3in FHD+ LCD (410ppi)Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 750GRAM: 6 or 8GBStorage: 128 or 256GB + microSD cardOperating system: Fairphone OS based on Android 11Camera: dual 48MP rear, 25MP selfie cameraConnectivity: 5G, esim, wifi6, NFC, Bluetooth 5.1 and GPSWater resistance: IP54 (rain resistance)Dimensions: 162 x 75.5 x 10.5mmWeight: 225g Continue reading...

UK campaigners write to chief executive with list of demands to ensure online safety of young peopleFacebook has lost the trust of parents, is prioritising commercial gain over children’s needs and must take steps to restore faith in its platforms, a global alliance of child protection campaigners and experts has warned Mark Zuckerberg.The Facebook founder and chief executive is urged to publish its internal assessments of the risks young people face on its services in a letter with 59 signatories including the UK’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Child Rescue Coalition in the UK.Share all its internal research on the impact its platforms have on children’s wellbeing.Set out what research has been conducted on how the company’s services contribute to child sexual abuse.Publish risk assessments of how its platforms affect children.Provide details of an internal reputational review of its products.Review the child protection implications of encrypted messaging. Continue reading...

Difficulty accessing app comes at bad time for platform in fight against TikTokSnapchat, the messaging app that has been engaged in a battle with its rival TikTok, went down for tens of thousands of users on Wednesday.Difficulties with accessing the Snapchat app, as well as sending or receiving messages, were registered by tens of thousands of users, who were told by the company to “hang tight”. Continue reading...

Up for discussion in the Guardian tech newsletter: Facebook and Google will be watching closely as MPs and peers consider proposed landmark legislation

Leigh Day launches group action for drivers classed as self-employed and not entitled to employee rightsAmazon could owe compensation totalling £140m to thousands of drivers delivering its parcels, according to a law firm that is launching a group claim on their behalf.Drivers who deliver for Amazon through its “delivery service partners” are classed as self-employed, meaning they are not entitled to employee rights such as holiday pay and the minimum wage, while they also do not have an employment contract. Continue reading...

A high court judge has ruled that Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum hacked the phone of his ex-wife Princess Haya using Pegasus spyware. In this episode we look at the implications of the affair

This April, Sophie Zhang told the world about her employer’s failure to combat deception and abuse. Her advice? No screenshots, lawyer up – and trust yourselfTwo years ago, I did something I almost never do: I put on a dress. Then I dropped my phone and other electronics off at the home of friends who had agreed to tell anyone who asked that I was at their place the entire time, and headed to the Oakland offices of the Guardian for my first meeting with a reporter.Leaving my electronics was a safeguard against possible tracking by my then employer, Facebook. The dress was an additional layer of alibi: I theorized that if anyone from work saw me and could contradict my first alibi, they might conclude that my unusual behavior was evidence of nothing more than an affair. Continue reading...

Xi Jinping has grasped a fundamental truth in his quest to win the technology race – that internet companies are all ultimately disposableThis is story of two parallel universes. Over in the western one, neoliberal capitalism rules. In the other – the Chinese universe – a different system presides. In both universes, government concern over the growing power of giant tech companies has been growing for a while, but there the similarities end.In the west, governments and legislatures were asleep at the wheel as the tech companies zoomed along their rapid growth paths. But in the past few years, democratic institutions have belatedly lumbered into action, or at any rate into a semblance of activity. Since 2010, for example, Europe has launched more than 36 regulatory probes against big tech, including 10 from the European commission and 26 from individual European countries. I keep a spreadsheet of these actions, which, in addition to the EU suits, currently lists seven major actions by US authorities, three by the UK Competition and Markets Authority and two by the German federal cartel office. And it seems that there are about 70 such actions in progress across the world. Continue reading...

‘In our vernacular, a lemon is something that’s not right. We have a lot of lemons around’In Miami, Florida, a few years ago, Charles H Traub was walking past the packed lot of a car dealership when he saw this outsized lemon parked in a vacant spot. “In our vernacular, as I suppose in yours, a lemon is something that’s not right.” What was no doubt a bit of Vegas-style pop art advertising seemed to Traub heavy with metaphoric potential. As he puts it mildly: “We have a lot of lemons around.”Since Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, Traub has been drawn to such incongruent images. The resulting series, Tickety-Boo (published by Damiani), is a visual stream of consciousness that he could only have shot on his phone. “Because you can respond anywhere, and everywhere. And you can do so without looking like a photographer. It frees you from, as we say in New York, schlepping a lot of equipment. People just think you’re on your phone.” Continue reading...