Facebook apologises to users struggling to access picture feeds and send messagesFacebook has said that issues that blocked access to its apps and services for some users have been fixed.The problems, which lasted around two hours on Friday, came days after the social media giant suffered a six-hour outage triggered by an error during routine maintenance on its network of data centres. Continue reading...
For nearly 30 years, Fifa has been a constant presence in my life. But it’s time to blow the whistle on this long-term relationshipIt is always tragic when a love turns sour, especially one that has lasted longer than any other adult relationship. But in 1993, I lost my heart in an office in Slough. Electronic Arts invited a motley crew from GamesMaster, the TV show that I was presenting at the time, down to see what they claimed would be the future of gaming. A badly-lit office and a grey plastic table strewn with spaghetti’d cables did not promise much. But then a switch was flicked and the earth moved for me. Years before Tim found Dawn, I found Fifa International Soccer on the Mega Drive.I’d had football game relationships before. Match Day was my first love when I was 12, and I shared my time between it and its cerebral sibling Football Manager. Kick Off was the one that got away, because I couldn’t perform when it mattered. I was considering settling down with Sensible Soccer, but then along came Fifa in all its 3D isometric finery, promising four players the ride of their lives. I felt I had torn through the fabric of time to spy on the future. Continue reading...
MPs and human rights groups ask parliament to look into how Sheikh Mohammed deployed sophisticated spywareMPs and human rights groups have called on ministers and parliament to investigate how the ruler of Dubai was able deploy sophisticated spyware to hack the phones of his ex-wife and her legal team in Britain last summer.Their demands follow the revelation of the spying scandal on Wednesday, which emerged after English courts concluded that agents of Sheikh Mohammed had infiltrated Princess Haya’s phone using controversial NSO Pegasus software. Continue reading...
Social media is a lifeline in many countries, and Facebook must do more to protect its systems from routine failuresRegulators in the US, UK and the EU are gearing up to probe Facebook over anticompetitive practices, its impact on the mental health of children and its destabilising impact on democracies.As these investigations begin, we should think of the 4 October global outage as a warning of the dangers that come with piling the lifelines and livelihoods of millions of vulnerable people into a single behemoth.Humza Jilani led Project Lifeline’s medico-legal asylum project in Matamoros, Mexico, in 2019. His reporting has previously appeared in Foreign Policy. A Marshall scholar, he is an MPhil student in international relations at Oxford Continue reading...
Company says Sky Glass will be paid for ‘like a mobile phone’ and removes need for dish or set-top boxSky has launched its own range of smart TVs, removing the need for customers to use a satellite dish or set-top box, as the pay-TV company shifts its offering to remain competitive in the streaming era.The broadband-powered TV set, called Sky Glass, will be be available to buy in the UK from 18 October and in Sky’s other European markets next year. The new service will aggregate content from streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+, as well as Sky channels and content from other broadcasters. Continue reading...
Whistleblower Frances Haugen testified the company is harming children and putting profits over safety, but what lies ahead?The congressional testimony of Frances Haugen is being described as a potential watershed moment after the former Facebook employee turned whistleblower warned lawmakers must “act now” to rein in the social media company.But the impact of the hearing – in which Haugen used her time at Facebook and leaked internal research to build a case that it is harming children, destabilizing democracies, and putting profits over safety – is uncertain, as lawmakers, experts and regulators remain split over the path forward. Continue reading...
Whistleblower Frances Haugen adds to long-held concerns that social media site is fuelling violence and instabilityWhistleblower Frances Haugen’s testimony to US senators on Tuesday shone a light on violence and instability in Myanmar and Ethiopia in recent years and long-held concerns about links with activity on Facebook.“What we saw in Myanmar and are now seeing in Ethiopia are only the opening chapters of a story so terrifying, no one wants to read the end of it,” Haugen said in her striking testimony. Haugen warned that Facebook was “literally fanning ethnic violence” in places such as Ethiopia because it was not policing its service adequately outside the US. Continue reading...
Despite years of hearings, the company has long seemed untouchable. But Frances Haugen appears to have inspired rare bipartisanshipThe testimony of Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, is likely to increase pressure on US lawmakers to undertake concrete legislative actions against the formerly untouchable tech company, following years of hearings and circular discussions about big tech’s growing power.In a hearing on Tuesday, the whistleblower shared internal Facebook reports with Congress and argued the company puts “astronomical profits before people”, harms children and is destabilizing democracies. Continue reading...
Hacker claims to have carried out the attack to ‘foster competition’ in online gamingThe Amazon-owned gaming platform Twitch has suffered a data breach that experts have called a “highly targeted attack”.Twitch on Wednesday confirmed it suffered a breach, and said its teams were working to understand its extent. Continue reading...
In this column we normally ask funny people to list the best things they’ve seen online. This one sends in a letter of complaint insteadDear the Guardian,This was originally meant to be an article but now I’d like to submit this as a formal letter of complaint. Continue reading...
Drivers say automated ID system needed to work failed to identify them because of their raceUber is facing further claims for compensation over racial discrimination from drivers who say they had been falsely dismissed because of malfunctioning face recognition technology.The claims have emerged after Uber introduced an automated system to check the ID of drivers operating its services in April last year. Each time a driver checks in for work, they must take a selfie picture that is then compared, using an automated system, to one on their Uber account profile. Continue reading...
We’d like to hear from social media users about how recent developments have affected themFacebook has come under fire after a whistleblower accused the company of putting “astronomical profits before people”, stoking divisions and endangering children.Frances Haugen’s testimony to the US Congress is the latest in a series of problems for the social media giant, coming as it suffered it global outage across its platforms, which in turn gave ammunition to calls for it to be broken up. Last month, a plan to build a version of Instagram for kids was halted, after leaked internal research showed the company was aware of the app’s effect on teen girls’ mental health. Continue reading...
It is refreshing to return to the world of Battlefield: two big sides and lots of multi-level combatIn the distance, a skyscraper towers above the island foliage, its lights flickering on in the stormy twilight. This is the target, the final objective our side needs to take to achieve total dominance of the map. The only problem is, we have to get to the top of the tower and from the silent muzzle flashes erupting from its rooftop, it is well defended. We will need air support as well as coordinated infiltration by a range of skilled operatives. Meanwhile, I have got my jeep lodged between two garages.This is the world of Battlefield, really as we have always known it. A vast landscape, a range of different character classes, aircraft zooming overhead and moments of both astonishing skill and ludicrous incompetence. But judging by the hands-on session I attended two days before the public beta, Battlefield 2042 takes all these elements and seeks to ramp up the tactical possibilities and disparities even further. Continue reading...
Frances Haugen’s testimony that social networking company puts profit before people ‘just not true’Mark Zuckerberg has hit back at the testimony of the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, saying her claims the company puts profit over people’s safety are “just not true”.In a blogpost, the Facebook founder and chief executive addressed one of the most damaging statements in Haugen’s opening speech to US senators on Tuesday, that Facebook puts “astronomical profits before people”. Continue reading...
Undaunted by scandals, the social media giant plans to tighten its grip on our everyday activities. We don’t have to just submitFacebook is in perpetual crisis mode. For years now, the company has confronted waves of critical scrutiny on issues caused or exacerbated by the platform. Recent revelations have lengthened the charge sheet.That list includes the mass data collection and privacy invasion by Cambridge Analytica; the accusations of Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election; unrestrained hate speech, inciting, among other things, genocide in Myanmar; the viral spread of disinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines, with Joe Biden proclaiming about Facebook and other social media platforms: “They’re killing people”. Add to that Facebook Marketplace: with a billion users buying and selling goods, ProPublica found a growing pool of scammers and fraudsters exploiting the site, with Facebook failing “to safeguard users”.Jathan Sadowski is a research fellow in the emerging technologies research lab at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
Frances Haugen says in congressional testimony Facebook puts ‘astronomical profits before people’Facebook puts “astronomical profits before people”, harms children and is destabilising democracies, a whistleblower has claimed in testimony to the US Congress.Frances Haugen said Facebook knew it steered young users towards damaging content and that its Instagram app was “like cigarettes” for under-18s. In a wide-ranging testimony, the former Facebook employee said the company did not have enough staff to keep the platform safe and was “literally fanning” ethnic violence in developing countries.The “buck stops” with the founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.Facebook knows its systems lead teenagers to anorexia-related content.The company had to “break the glass” and turn back on safety settings after the 6 January Washington riots.Facebook intentionally targets teenagers and children under 13.Monday’s outage that brought down Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp meant that for more than five hours Facebook could not “destabilise democracies”. Continue reading...
US justice department suspended fraud charges against chief financial officer of Chinese telecoms giantThe Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei hopes that the US justice department’s decision to abandon its efforts to extradite Meng Wanzhou may mark the starting point in a new era in relations between the company, China and the US government.Meng, the firm’s chief financial officer and daughter of its founder, was freed last month after three years of house arrest in Canada following an agreement with the justice department to suspend fraud charges against her. Continue reading...
Engineers’ command accidentally disconnected company’s network from rest of world, blogpost saysFacebook has said an error during routine maintenance of its network of data centers caused a cascade of problems that took down its platforms for more than six hours on Monday.In a blogpost published on Tuesday, Santosh Janardhan, vice-president of engineering, said the global outage that saw Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp go dark for billions of users had begun when the company’s engineers issued a command that unintentionally disconnected Facebook data centers from the rest of the world. Continue reading...
Frances Haugen’s testimony spotlighted the negative effects of social media’s impact on children and called for regulation of the companyThe Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, testified before the US Congress on Tuesday, painting a dire picture of the tech giant’s policies.Haugen’s appearance in front of the US Senate is just the latest high-profile hearing on big tech, but it proved a substantive and insightful session that is sure to have a lasting impact. Continue reading...
Shutdown heavily impacts ability to communicate and do business for many of platform’s 2.8 billion usersFrom bereft Brazilians to relaxed Russians and internet-savvy Indians, Facebook’s outage highlighted the dependence much of the world has developed on its social media products, and put the spotlight on its global power.The fallout of Facebook’s unprecedented almost six-hour outage has mostly focused on the financial impact to the $1tn social media empire: $50bn (£37bn) was wiped off the company’s market value by jittery investors, founder Mark Zuckerberg’s paper fortune shrunk by $7bn and more than $13m of the advertising dollars that are its lifeblood disappeared each hour the platform was offline. Continue reading...
California federal court orders company to pay Owen Diaz who alleges he faced ‘daily racial epithets’ including the ‘N-word’Tesla has been ordered by a federal court in California to pay almost $137m in damages to a Black former employee who said he endured racial abuse while working at a factory in Fremont.Owen Diaz, a former contracted elevator operator who worked at the plant between 2015 and 2016, alleged he was harassed and faced “daily racial epithets” including the “N-word”. He also said employees drew swastikas and left racist graffiti and drawings around the plant. Continue reading...
We would like to hear your experiences of when you were unable to access your social media accountsOn Monday and Tuesday, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram experienced an outage that caused the social media platforms to go down globally for nearly six hours.We would like to know how you were affected by the outage and your experiences during the time when you couldn’t access your accounts. Continue reading...
Frances Haugen was frustrated that Facebook was not publicly acknowledging the harm its platforms could cause• Facebook is putting profit before public good, says whistleblower
Frances Haugen tells US news show why she decided to reveal inside story about social networking firmFrances Haugen’s interview with the US news programme 60 Minutes contained a litany of damning statements about Facebook. Haugen, a former Facebook employee who had joined the company to help it combat misinformation, told the CBS show the tech firm prioritised profit over safety and was “tearing our societies apart”.Haugen will testify in Washington on Tuesday, as political pressure builds on Facebook. Here are some of the key excerpts from Haugen’s interview. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5QA66)
Small upgrades on last year’s best iPhone, now with twice the starting storageThe iPhone 13 is a minor upgrade to last year’s brilliant iPhone 12, with an improved camera, larger storage longer battery life and a small price cut.Apple’s latest regular-sized smartphone costs £779 ($799 or A$1,349), which is £20 cheaper than its predecessor, and sits between the smaller £679 iPhone 13 mini and the £949 iPhone 13 Pro.Screen: 6.1in Super Retina XDR (OLED) (460ppi)Processor: Apple A15 BionicRAM: 4GBStorage: 128, 256 or 512GBOperating system: iOS 15Camera: dual 12MP rear cameras with OIS, 12MP front-facing cameraConnectivity: 5G, wifi 6, NFC, Bluetooth 5, Lightning, ultra wideband and locationWater resistance: IP68 (6 metres for 30 mins)Dimensions: 146.7mm x 71.5mm x 7.7mmWeight: 174g Continue reading...
There is no such thing as too much garlic according to a growing trend amongst TikTok cooks. From a 40 clove garlic bread and a 60 clove soup to people snacking on whole cloves with sriracha, or preserved in honey, all with millions of views.► Subscribe to Guardian Australia on YouTube
As emails loom omnipresent in our connected lives, is the quest for an empty inbox a noble pursuit or an unwinnable war?Last week, I asked my Twitter followers about their email inboxes.Author Mohammed Massoud Morsi likened his to a “Kalashnikov on semi-automatic…Nudge, Nudge, Nudge. Nudge. Nudge, Nudge.” Human rights lawyer Diana Sayed replied that hers functions as a to-do list that is emptied on the regular. And when editor Caitlin Chang revealed that her inbox is sitting at over 1,000 and counting (she says she only ever reads the ones at the top, as they’re probably the most important), someone’s response to her was, “I threw up a little in my mouth”. Continue reading...
Company suspended former president’s account in January following the attack on the US CapitolDonald Trump has asked a federal judge in Florida to force social media giant Twitter to restore his account, which the company suspended in January following the attack that month on the US Capitol in Washington DC.Trump’s use of the platform was a signature mark of his run for the presidency in 2016 and one he continued to use in office. He wielded it to attack enemies and dominate news cycles. Continue reading...
Police struggle to catch online fraudsters, often operating from overseas, but now a new breed of amateurs are taking matters into their own handsThree to four days a week, for one or two hours at a time, Rosie Okumura, 35, telephones thieves and messes with their minds. For the past two years, the LA-based voice actor has run a sort of reverse call centre, deliberately ringing the people most of us hang up on – scammers who pose as tax agencies or tech-support companies or inform you that you’ve recently been in a car accident you somehow don’t recall. When Okumura gets a scammer on the line, she will pretend to be an old lady, or a six-year-old girl, or do an uncanny impression of Apple’s virtual assistant Siri. Once, she successfully fooled a fake customer service representative into believing that she was Britney Spears. “I waste their time,” she explains, “and now they’re not stealing from someone’s grandma.”Okumura is a “scambaiter” – a type of vigilante who disrupts, exposes or even scams the world’s scammers. While scambaiting has a troubled 20-year online history, with early forum users employing extreme, often racist, humiliation tactics, a new breed of scambaiters are taking over TikTok and YouTube. Okumura has more than 1.5 million followers across both video platforms, where she likes to keep things “funny and light”. Continue reading...
Tests of natural language processing models show that the bigger they are, the bigger liars they are. Should we be worried?We are, as the critic George Steiner observed, “language animals”. Perhaps that’s why we are fascinated by other creatures that appear to have language – dolphins, whales, apes, birds and so on. In her fascinating book, Atlas of AI, Kate Crawford relates how, at the end of the 19th century, Europe was captivated by a horse called Hans that apparently could solve maths problems, tell the time, identify days on a calendar, differentiate musical tones and spell out words and sentences by tapping his hooves. Even the staid New York Times was captivated, calling him “Berlin’s wonderful horse; he can do almost everything but talk”.It was, of course, baloney: the horse was trained to pick up subtle signs of what his owner wanted him to do. But, as Crawford says, the story is compelling: “the relationship between desire, illusion and action; the business of spectacles, how we anthropomorphise the non-human, how biases emerge and the politics of intelligence”. When, in 1964, the computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum created Eliza, a computer program that could perform the speech acts of a Rogerian psychotherapist – ie someone who specialised in parroting back to patients what they had just said – lots of people fell for her/it. (And if you want to see why, there’s a neat implementation of her by Michael Wallace and George Dunlop on the web.) Continue reading...
Hundreds of listings on online marketplaces sell merchandise venerating disgraced CEO Elizabeth HolmesThere are posters, stickers and coffee mugs, flags, T-shirts and masks – all celebrating Silicon Valley “girl boss”, Elizabeth Holmes.The fraud case of the Theranos founder has given way to a burgeoning cottage industry for merchandise venerating the disgraced CEO. Continue reading...
Open letter by current and ex-staffers alleges ‘consistently inappropriate’ behaviour by Blue Origin leadersA group of current and former employees at Blue Origin, the space flight company owned by the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, has accused the business of operating a work environment that is “rife with sexism” and prefers “breakneck speed” to safety.An open letter written by Alexandra Abrams, the former head of employee communications at Blue Origin and 20 other current and former workers, says the company’s culture “reflects the worst of the world we live in now” and must change. Continue reading...
Moscow warns of retaliation against video-sharing platform after RT channels blocked over Covid disinformationRussia on Wednesday threatened to block YouTube and take other retaliatory measures, after the US video-sharing platform blocked the German-language channels of state broadcaster RT.Moscow has recently been ramping up pressure on foreign tech giants as it seeks greater control over content available online to its domestic audience. Continue reading...
Streaming site cracks down on harmful content about all approved Covid jabsYouTube is to remove videos that spread misinformation about all vaccines, as it steps up a crackdown on harmful content posted during the coronavirus pandemic.From Wednesday, the video streaming site, which has already banned Covid jab falsehoods, will take down content that contains misinformation such as claiming any approved vaccine is dangerous, causes chronic health defects or does not reduce spread of disease. Continue reading...
Up for discussion in the Guardian tech newsletter: ‘Silicon Valley’s biggest fraud’ … Impersonating a YouTube exec … and how refugees are driving AI at big tech firms• Don’t get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereWe’re one month in to the blockbuster trial of Elizabeth Holmes, founder of blood testing startup Theranos, and it shows no sign of releasing its grip on the public imagination. Dozens of members of the media, myself included, have lined up each week since 31 August outside a crowded courthouse in San Jose, California, to bear witness to the justice process surrounding the company and its downfall – which has been called “Silicon Valley’s biggest fraud”. Continue reading...
Russian state-backed broadcaster was found to have breached YouTube’s rules on coronavirus coverageYouTube has deleted Russian state-backed broadcaster RT’s German-language channels, saying they had breached its Covid misinformation policy.“YouTube has always had clear community guidelines that outline what is allowed on the platform,” said a spokesperson. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5Q3NE)
Robot that can check on loved ones and pets is one of plethora of devices announced at big launch eventAmazon has launched its long-awaited home robot, named Astro, that can autonomously drive around your home packed with cameras and a screen. Astro can map your home’s layout, recognise objects and check on loved ones and pets remotely using a series of cameras and a display on its front, featuring a set of expressive animated eyes.The robot can handle video calls, recognising you and coming to find you when someone calls, and provides all the features of Alexa on wheels. But Dave Limp, head of Amazon’s devices and services, said “customers don’t just want Alexa on wheels so we’ve embodied it with a unique persona that’s all its own”. Continue reading...
For a niche but passionate corner of the internet, video games are not simply things to play, but structures to be torn down and rebuilt – togetherIn the summer of 2017, the gamer Beck Abney sat in his room playing Mario Kart 64. What happened next has been described as one of the greatest achievements in gaming history. Many doubted it could even be done at all.He was trying to perform one of gaming’s hardest glitches: the Weathertenko, a trick that if done correctly can finish a full lap of the stage Choco Mountain in just a handful of seconds. To do it once requires immense skill, but Abney wanted to do three in a row, a feat never before achieved in recorded history. And he wanted to do it incredibly quickly.
Ofcom hopes One Touch Switch process will encourage people to seek out better dealsThe UK media regulator, Ofcom, has introduced a new service to make it easier for customers to switch broadband supplier to get a better deal.Ofcom hopes that the new process, One Touch Switch, will encourage people to seek out better deals after research found that more than two-fifths of people were put off switching broadband suppliers because of the hassle. Continue reading...
Deep sea mining firms claim their rare metals are necessary to power clean tech – but with even major electric car firms now backing a moratorium, critics say there is an alternativeMore in this series
Mike Pompeo and officials requested ‘options’ for killing Assange following WikiLeaks’ publication of CIA hacking tools, report saysSenior CIA officials during the Trump administration discussed abducting and even assassinating WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, according to a US report citing former officials.The discussions on kidnapping or killing Assange took place in 2017, Yahoo News reported, when the fugitive Australian activist was entering his fifth year sheltering in the Ecuadorian embassy. The then CIA director, Mike Pompeo, and his top officials were furious about WikiLeaks’ publication of “Vault 7”, a set of CIA hacking tools, a breach which the agency deemed to be the biggest data loss in its history. Continue reading...
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are advising visitors to their Archewell website to take regular screen breaks. How does this approach line up with the evidence?Name: Screen time.Age: It’s less about how old, more about how long. Continue reading...
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