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It’s 30 years since the first SMS landed. Writers, authors and comedians share the txt msgs that changed their lifeIt was 2007: the nation was saying goodbye to Tony Blair and the tightness of my jeans was outrageous. I was 22, fresh out of university and in a thrilling new relationship with the man who would, 11 years later, become my husband. For ages, I kept this relationship from my family, but towards the end of spring I was done with the indignity of sneaking around. I wanted to be open. I eventually told my fairly traditional Ghanaian mother that I was gay and had a boyfriend who I had been seeing for months. Let’s just say that the conversation involved increasingly heated uses of the word “No”. Continue reading...

The New York subway provided the inspiration for this photo of a woman waiting on a platformChris Maliwat describes the New York subway as the first slot in a pinball machine. “Whenever I head down there, I know it’s going to be a mini adventure, like I’m about to be launched into the world,” he says. “I saw this woman waiting at Metropolitan Avenue/Grand Street station and wondered which world she was about to shoot out into. Are there people like her where she’s going? Is she headed to her tribe? I think so. Everyone finds their tribe in New York – that’s why people come here.”He didn’t approach her but instead surreptitiously took her photo for his Instagram page Subwaygram. “The subway is full of people on their phones and the ubiquity means mine disappears. We’re all familiar with what we do when we feel a camera pointing our way; there’s a flit in the eyes, a tightening of the body. I don’t want that. I’m not a travel photographer, a hunter out on safari; I’m a fellow passenger making this a regular part of my day,” Maliwat says. Continue reading...

New head of trust and safety Ella Irwin says Elon Musk is urging Twitter ‘to take more risks’ in the wake of mass layoffsElon Musk’s Twitter is leaning heavily on automation to moderate content according to the company’s new head of trust and safety, amid a reported surge in hate speech on the social media platform.Ella Irwin has told the Reuters news agency that Musk, who acquired the company in October, was focused on using automation more, arguing that Twitter had in the past erred on the side of using time and labour-intensive human reviews of harmful content. Continue reading...

Super apps can revolutionise your life – but do you want to pay the price, wonders AI and innovation professor David ShrierAcross Asia, the trend for a single app that does everything – from deliveries to bookings to chatting – is spreading. Known as super apps, they are rumoured to be the inspiration for Elon Musk’s plan for Twitter. Could they take off here – and should they? I asked David Shrier, professor of practice, AI and innovation at Imperial College Business School in London.Have you tried a super app?

Deciphering encryption is said to have upended a vast drug network, but some say the method should worry us allLaw enforcement sources have described it as an embarrassment of riches, a treasure trove that led to raids across Europe and in Dubai this week that were said to have brought down a super-cartel controlling a third of the European cocaine trade.“It was as if we were sitting at the table with the criminals,” the executive director of Europol, Catherine De Bolle, said in a recent interview. Continue reading...

Licensed video game movies get a bad rap – but free film-makers from the franchises and you get some great films about games. Here are some of the bestWhen most people think of movies about games, they immediately recall the astonishing light-cycle chase in Steven Lisberger’s visually daring film. With its underlying themes of dehumanisation and corporate greed in the digital era, Tron was more than an action romp with pretty effects and a cool arcade setting; a fact underlined by a committed lead performance from Jeff Bridges. Continue reading...

Many researchers are fleeing the platform, unnerved by the surge in climate misinformation since Musk’s chaotic takeoverTwitter has proved a cherished forum for climate scientists to share research, as well as for activists seeking to rally action to halt oil pipelines or decry politicians’ failure to cut pollution. But many are now fleeing Twitter due to a surge in climate misinformation, spam and even threats that have upended their relationship with the platform.Scientists and advocates have told the Guardian they have become unnerved by a recent resurgence of debunked climate change denialist talking points and memes on Twitter, with the term #ClimateScam now regularly the first result that appears when “climate” is searched on the site. Continue reading...

World’s richest man says human trials will begin within six months during presentation at health tech company NeuralinkElon Musk said on Wednesday he expects a brain chip developed by his health tech company to begin human trials in the next six months.During a presentation by Musk’s company Neuralink, Musk gave updates on the company’s wireless brain chip. In addition to forecasting clinical trials, Musk said he plans to get one of the chips himself. Continue reading...

Guardian clip attracted more than 103m views and 1.5m likes and was No 1 trending on the website in the UKA Guardian video of the moment Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars was the top trending video on YouTube in the UK this year.The uncensored clip of the smack that reverberated around the world has racked up more than 103m views and 1.5m likes on the video-sharing website. Continue reading...

We all said goodbye at the restaurant only to find we were walking in the same direction, unsure of what to sayThat’s it, time to pull the plug. Enough is enough.We’ve been more than patient with Elon Musk, weathering the constant cringe posts and the crypto memes, the randomly generated child names and the Mars colony dystopianism – and that’s before you even get into the basic culture-destroying billionaire stuff. Continue reading...

Disgraced chief executive tells summit he ‘didn’t knowingly commingle funds’ with FTX’s sister company Alameda Research“Look, I screwed up,” the fallen crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried told a conference in New York on Wednesday, but he maintained he “didn’t ever try to commit fraud” and was “shocked” by the collapse of his businesses.With glassy eyes, at times visibly shaking, Bankman-Fried appeared via video conference from a nondescript room in the Bahamas. He told the New York Times DealBook summit he was “deeply sorry about what happened” but consistently said he did not have a full picture of what was going on within the various branches of FTX, his now bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, and its offshoots. Continue reading...

Ofcom inquiry follows complaints over lack of information on annual mid-contract price risesThe telecoms regulator has launched an investigation into whether companies are ripping off mobile and broadband customers by not telling them that they could face bill increases of hundreds of pounds when they sign their contract.Ofcom will investigate the sales practices used in the UK telecoms market – which is dominated by BT, EE, Virgin Media O2, Sky, Vodafone, Three and TalkTalk – after complaints that customers were not told about mid-contract price rises when they signed up. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: Actor Michael Nathanson hears from his peers on what happens when your character meets their end in Playing Dead. Plus: five podcasts adapted for TV

After chat with Tim Cook the tycoon admits misunderstanding and Apple had ‘never considered removing platform’Elon Musk has said he has “resolved” a misunderstanding with Apple over his claim that Twitter was being threatened with removal from the iPhone maker’s app store.The new Twitter owner tweeted on Wednesday that he had had a “good conversation” with Apple CEO Tim Cook and that Apple had “never considered” removing the social media platform from its app store. Continue reading...

Company says its security system prevented the hacker accessing customer data or encrypted passwords

Adoption of ‘multi-technology mix’ model and decision to preference regions in rollout cited as major factors in reported losses

The Starlink technology uses more than 3,000 low Earth small orbit satellites to beam broadband signalsElon Musk’s satellite Starlink technology is to be part of a UK government trial to get better internet connectivity to remote parts of the country.The technology, which uses more than 3,000 low Earth orbit small satellites to beam a broadband signal and is operated by the firm SpaceX, will initially be trialled at three remote locations – Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire Moors national park, Wasdale Head in the Lake District and two sites within Snowdonia national park, the government said. Continue reading...

European Bank criticises digital currency sector for facilitating illegal activityThe European Central Bank says bitcoin is on an “artificially induced last gasp before the road to irrelevance”, in a scathing intervention arguing against giving regulatory legitimacy to the cryptocurrency.In a strongly worded blogpost, senior European Central Bank (ECB) staffers Ulrich Bindseil and Jürgen Schaaf criticised bitcoin for being a hotbed of illegal transactions that brings reputational risk for any bank that gets involved with the sector. Continue reading...

Now that Elon Musk has bought the social media platform, some users fear a unique form of Black witnessing will be lostOn Twitter – Black Twitter – Sydette Harry found people who resonated with her intersectional identities as a Black woman, a New Yorker, an immigrant and a member of the diaspora with family in England, Guyana and Trinidad.But she also found other affinity groups. Continue reading...

Take a trip down memory lane with six superb retro games consoles you can get your hands on without breaking the bankSince the hugely successful launch of the Nintendo NES Classic Edition back in 2016, the retro games console has become a lucrative little side hustle for the big console manufacturers and smaller retro hardware companies; so much so that machines such as the SNES Classic Mini and Mega Drive Mini – which are both excellent – are now hard to get hold of without paying vastly inflated prices. Here, though, are six superb alternatives you can buy now without too much of a hunt or the need to take out a second mortgage. Continue reading...

Decision comes after heated debate as police oversight groups warn over further militarization of law enforcementPolice in San Francisco will be allowed to deploy potentially lethal, remote-controlled robots in emergency situations. The controversial policy was approved after weeks of scrutiny and a heated debate among the city’s board of supervisors during their meeting on Tuesday.Police oversight groups, the ACLU and San Francisco’s public defender had urged the 11-member body to reject the police’s use of equipment proposal. Opponents of the policy said it would lead to further militarization of a police force already too aggressive with underserved communities. They said the parameters under which use would be allowed were too vague. Supporters argued that having these robots as an option in dangerous situations was necessary given what they see as an ever-increasing risk of a high-profile shooting hitting the city. Continue reading...

Ministers drop ‘harmful communications’ offence with some arguing it was ‘legislating for hurt feelings’The online safety bill is returning to parliament under the aegis of its fourth prime minister and seventh secretary of state since it was first proposed as an online harms white paper under Theresa May.Each of those has been determined to leave their fingerprints on the legislation, which has swollen to encompass everything from age verification on pornography to criminalisation of posting falsehoods online, and Rishi Sunak and the digital and culture secretary, Michelle Donelan, are no different. Continue reading...

Michelle Donelan rejects claim by father of Molly Russell that online safety bill has been watered down

US owners say they’ve been on the receiving end of road rage, but it may be more about EVs than the CEO himselfTesla lost at least one customer this weekend, after Alyssa Milano tweeted that she had returned her model for a Volkswagen electric vehicle, prompting jokes from Elon Musk and conservative commentators about the German manufacturer’s Nazi origin story. Milano said she had ditched Tesla due to Musk’s ownership of Twitter.While Tesla owners do not seem to be following the actor’s move en masse, some note that they have been on the receiving end of road rage directed toward their vehicle choice. Continue reading...

Experts say investing in identity theft protection may provide peace of mind, but won’t help recover lost information

Twitter owner says Apple gave no reason for the potential ban and had stopped advertising on the platformElon Musk has accused Apple of threatening to remove Twitter from its App Store without giving a reason to the social media platform.Twitter’s new owner also said the iPhone maker had stopped advertising on Twitter, prompting him to ask if the tech group hated free speech. Continue reading...

Revised online safety bill proposes fines of 10% of revenue but drops harmful communications offenceSocial media platforms that breach pledges to block sexist and racist content face the threat of substantial fines under government changes to the online safety bill announced on Monday.Under the new approach, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter must also give users the option of avoiding content that is harmful but does not constitute a criminal offence. This could include racism, misogyny or the glorification of eating disorders. Continue reading...

Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp owner has been fined nearly €1bn by EU since September 2021Facebook’s owner has been fined €265m (£230m) by the Irish data watchdog after a breach that resulted in the details of more than 500 million users being published online.The Data Protection Commission (DPC) said Meta had infringed two articles of the EU’s data protection laws after details of Facebook users from around the world were scraped from public profiles in 2018 and 2019. Continue reading...

Activity indicates ‘first major failure’ to stop government interference under ownership of Elon MuskTwitter has been flooded with nuisance posts designed to obscure news of the coronavirus lockdown protests in China, in an apparent state-directed attempt to suppress footage of the demonstrations.Chinese bot accounts – not operated by humans – are being used to flood the social networking service with adverts for sex workers, pornography and gambling when users search for a major city in the country, such as Shanghai or Beijing, using Chinese script. Continue reading...

Teachers and parents can’t detect this new form of plagiarism. Tech companies could step in – if they had the will to do soParents and teachers across the world are rejoicing as students have returned to classrooms. But unbeknownst to them, an unexpected insidious academic threat is on the scene: a revolution in artificial intelligence has created powerful new automatic writing tools. These are machines optimised for cheating on school and university papers, a potential siren song for students that is difficult, if not outright impossible, to catch.Of course, cheats have always existed, and there is an eternal and familiar cat-and-mouse dynamic between students and teachers. But where once the cheat had to pay someone to write an essay for them, or download an essay from the web that was easily detectable by plagiarism software, new AI language-generation technologies make it easy to produce high-quality essays. Continue reading...

FTX collapse | Replica of William the Conqueror’s ship | A seat for the privileged | Giant otters | Matt Hancock’s ‘junglewashing’Moya Lothian-McLean (Opinion, 25 November) appears to signal the death of “effective altruism” (EA) on the basis of the fall from grace of one of its most famous proponents, Sam Bankman-Fried. Just as Dr Andrew Wakefield’s discredited research into the MMR vaccine did not dishonour medical research in its entirety, nor should Bankman-Fried’s involvement in the collapse of the cryptocurency exchange FTX discredit EA. The aim of “doing good better” remains a laudable objective.

Online scams such as banking and credit card fraud are the most prevalent cyberthreat, says InterpolPolice and investigators fear organised gangs of fraudsters are expanding across sub-Saharan Africa, exploiting new opportunities as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the global economic crisis to make huge sums with little risk of being caught.The growth will have a direct impact on the rest of the world, where many victims of “hugely lucrative” fraud live, senior police officials have said. Continue reading...

The American computer scientist, who coined the term ‘virtual reality,’ cautions against online ‘psychological operatives’Jaron Lanier, the eminent American computer scientist, composer and artist, is no stranger to skepticism around social media, but his current interpretations of its effects are becoming darker and his warnings more trenchant.Lanier, a dreadlocked free-thinker credited with coining the term “virtual reality”, has long sounded dire sirens about the dangers of a world over-reliant on the internet and at the increasing mercy of tech lords, their social media platforms and those who work for them. Continue reading...

Culture secretary Michelle Donelan to amend bill that, after Molly Russell case, will place duty of care on social media firmsPeople who use social media posts to encourage self-harm face criminal prosecution under government changes to the revived online safety bill.Culture secretary Michelle Donelan will update the bill to criminalise encouraging self-harm when the legislation returns to parliament next month. Continue reading...

Tech titans like Elon Musk and Sam Bankman-Fried have been feted for their wealth, but see the world in ways that also merit scrutinyThe new gods are running into a bit of trouble. From the soap opera playing out at Twitter HQ, the too-big-to-fail bankruptcies in the cryptocurrency space, to mass tech layoffs, the past month has seen successive headlines declaring a litany of woes facing the bullish tech boyos in Silicon Valley and beyond.The minute-by-minute coverage of Elon Musk’s escapades and the global levels of interest in the FTX collapse both go well beyond what you’d expect from a business story. I’m willing to gamble a few Bitcoins that the popular fixation has little to do with any particular interest in successful software engineering; rather it is the personalities who inhabit these spaces, and the philosophies that propel them in their godlike ambition. What is their end goal, we wonder. What drives them, beyond the pursuit of growth? It is easy to assume that money is all that motivates the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Musk and Jeff Bezos. Except, when you start to examine the mindsets of these men, it’s clear that cash is far from the whole story.Moya Lothian-McLean is a contributing editor at Novara MediaDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

UK government blocked new Chinese ownership on security grounds, but Nexperia bosses had ‘planned to build two new plants’

The legendary designer behind Super Mario, Zelda and many other Nintendo classics understood how technological innovation and sharp ideas could work together. At 70, he’s lost none of his sense of fun

Tech companies aim to pick up experienced engineering talent by appealing to dislike of Tesla chief executive’s methodsPut off by Elon Musk’s muscular management style? Move to us! That’s the pitch being used by talent-starved technology firms trying to lure thousands of former Twitter employees laid off by the social media company under its new owner.Twitter has fired top executives and enforced steep job cuts with little warning following Musk’s tumultuous takeover of the social media platform. About half of the workforce – around 3,700 employees – has been laid off. Continue reading...

Oversight board says removal of Secrets Not Safe by Chinx (OS) suggests ‘over-policing of certain communities’Meta’s oversight board, the quasi-independent “supreme court” of Facebook and Instagram, has forced the company to reinstate a clip of drill music originally removed from Instagram at the request of the Metropolitan police.The clip, a short excerpt of the song Secrets Not Safe by Chinx (OS), was removed after the Met flagged the track to Meta, arguing that it could lead to “retaliatory violence” in the context of the London gang scene. Continue reading...

The 50 biggest claims against FTX total $3.1bn. Now a US court has to determine who gets what – if anything. Plus, what will be more valuable by the end of the year: Musk’s stake in Twitter, or a lettuce?

Barbara Otis on the Twitter CEO’s troubling behaviour towards employeesAs an organisational development practitioner, I have been watching the Twitter disaster unfold. As André Spicer’s article says, the kind of workplace behaviour exhibited by Elon Musk is not unusual among people in positions of power (The Elon Musk effect: have we reached our limit with awful bosses?, theguardian.com, 18 November).Good leaders don’t have to email employees to tell them that they are expected to work hard. Great employees will work hard and be loyal when a healthy environment exists, where they are self-motivated and feel safe. Continue reading...

Expert in device science at Imperial College London who developed the longer-life batteries that power electric cars and smartphonesThe development of much more efficient, next-generation lithium-ion batteries, with higher energy densities and longer life cycles, was just one of several significant innovations made by Mino Green, emeritus professor of electrical device science at Imperial College London, who has died aged 95.In the early 2000s, the advent of smartphones, mobile computing, and the distant possibility of ubiquitous electric cars, led to increased research into higher density energy storage. Two potential candidates for higher energy densities were the lithium-oxygen battery, which promised the highest possible theoretical energy density, and the lithium-silicon battery. Research at the time showed that both suffered from issues relating to cycle life – that is the number of times the battery could be recharged without losing significant capacity. Continue reading...

Platform’s paid verification system is being used to give sense of validity to accounts pushing health misinformationAs the troubled social media platform Twitter rolled out a paid verification system and laid off thousands of content moderators, health misinformation accounts on the social network began pushing their messages to a wider audience than ever.Under Elon Musk’s new direction for Twitter, several anti-vaccine accounts with tens of thousands of followers are now verified by paying $7.99 a month for Twitter Blue. Continue reading...

Company says cryptocurrency allegedly stolen in collapse being transferred to other exchangesThe collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX owes its 50 biggest creditors nearly $3.1bn (£2.6bn), according to a filing in a US bankruptcy court.The exchange owes about $1.45bn to its top 10 creditors, it said in a court filing over the weekend, without naming them. The largest creditor is owed $226m. Continue reading...

Premium Windows 11 PC offers smooth and quiet experience but is showing its age compared with rivalsMicrosoft’s latest Surface Laptop has new chips, new connections and costs the same as last year but has a five-year-old design that makes it look aged.The Surface Laptop 5 starts at £999 ($999/A$1,699) for the 13.5in version, replacing the 18-month-old Laptop 4 as Microsoft’s idea of what a standard Windows 11 notebook should be. It sits above Microsoft’s entry-level Surface Laptop Go 2, which comes in at £529. Continue reading...

My brother-in-law has been charged for countless shipments which has forced him into the redWe are having a bizarre problem with Amazon that has resulted in countless boxes of the same Ninja cookbook being delivered to my brother-in-law.He lives in a supportive care establishment and, shortly after moving in, started receiving the boxes over several days, none of which he had ordered. Continue reading...

The collapse of digital ventures like FTX shows that no amount of hype and starry-eyed proselytising can escape realityThe tiny island nation of Tuvalu recently announced that it would be the first country to fully replicate itself as a virtual reproduction in the metaverse.Tuvalu, comprising of nine small islands in the Pacific situated between Australia and Hawaii, fears that its demise is inevitable due to human-induced climate change, and wanted to preserve “the most precious assets of its people … and move them to the cloud”. Continue reading...

Charlotte Fantelli’s documentary about activist Simon Sansome and his wife is let down by clichés and embarrassing reconstruction scenesThe intentions behind this documentary about disabled rights activist Simon Sansome and his wife, Kate, are noble, but the tacky, cliché-ridden execution doesn’t live up to them. Essentially, the film is built around one long interview with the Sansomes on how, not long after their wedding, Simon suddenly found himself paralysed from the waist down (“Little did we know it was going to be our final dance together,” he says). The combination of a clumsy chiropractor, a rare condition and misdiagnosis turned him into a wheelchair user.The change in circumstances would lead to Simon losing his job as a Liberal Democrat councillor in his Leicestershire district and much anguish for the couple. Eventually, he discovered a way to make a difference by starting a campaign to improve access for disabled people and change attitudes. When Facebook wouldn’t let him share a tasteful image of a nude woman with a partially amputated leg, he kicked up a fuss and taped one of their representatives on the phone explaining that, at the time, the social media company censored images that some people might find disturbing. This surely must have caused a terrible headache for former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, now chief shill for Facebook, but the publicity did wonders for Simon’s Ability Access group, which forced the social media giant to apologise. Continue reading...

From armed robot dogs to target-seeking drones, the use of artificial intelligence in warfare presents ethical dilemmas that urgently need addressingThe security convoy turned on to Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Boulevard at around 3:30pm on 27 November 2020. The VIP was the Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, widely regarded as the head of Iran’s secret nuclear weapons programme. He was driving his wife to their country property, flanked by bodyguards in other vehicles. They were close to home when the assassin struck.A number of shots rang out, smashing into Fakhrizadeh’s black Nissan and bringing it to a halt. The gun fired again, hitting the scientist in the shoulder and causing him to exit the vehicle. With Fakhrizadeh in the open, the assassin delivered the fatal shots, leaving Fakhrizadeh’s wife uninjured in the passenger seat. Continue reading...