Technology | The Guardian

Now a co-founder of Semafor, formerly of Politico, BuzzFeed and the New York Times, the author expertly pulls readers inBen Smith is a willing passenger on the rollercoaster also known as the internet. He reported for Politico, was founding editor-in-chief at BuzzFeed News and did a stint as a columnist for the New York Times. Then he co-founded Semafor. Graced with a keen eye and sharp wit, he has seen and heard plenty.People and businesses crash, burn and sometimes rise again. BuzzFeed News is no more. The New York Times trades 75% higher than five years ago. Tucker Carlson is off the air. Roger Ailes is dead. Twitter ain’t what it used to be.Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral is published in the US by Penguin Random House Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: Surely we go to the cinema to be jolted and discomfited by someone else’s ideas – not to see ourselves in easy meetcute rom-coms with Marilyn Monroe

Scam calls are an industrial-sized nuisance. Aided by an ‘ethical hacker’, the BBC’s hit daytime breakout show Scam Interceptors is making must-see TV by turning the tables on the con artistsIt’s Thursday morning in the Scam Hub – a darkened room at the BBC’s Pacific Quay studio in Glasgow full of glowing screens and people feverishly tapping away on laptops under the glare of TV cameras – and the atmosphere is tense. We’re eavesdropping on a call between a man in the UK and a scammer in Kolkata, India, who has managed to talk her way inside the unwitting scamee’s Amazon account.Believing that he’s receiving a benevolent customer service call warning of rogue activity, the man has been conned into giving away a private passcode. Worse, the scammer has convinced him to download software to his phone granting remote access to his device, which could allow the harvesting of much more sensitive information including bank details. Continue reading...

E-commerce behemoth, in the midst of aggressively cutting costs including laying-off 27,000 workers, reported revenue growthAmazon shares jumped more than 11%, as income from its cloud computing and advertising units beat estimates for the first quarter of the year.The e-commerce behemoth, which is in the midst of aggressively cutting costs including laying-off 27,000 workers, said revenue for the quarter was $127.4bn, a 9% growth compared with the $116.4bn it reported during the same period last year.Reuters contributed reporting Continue reading...

Downing Street responds to stinging attack from US firm’s president over blocking of $69bn Activision dealDowning Street has defended the UK as an “extremely attractive” place for tech startups after Microsoft’s president said Brexit Britain was worse for business than the EU, in a stinging attack on the UK’s decision to block a $69bn (£55bn) deal to take over Activision Blizzard.Microsoft rounded on the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on Thursday after a surprise decision to block its planned takeover of the Call of Duty games developer, with its president, Brad Smith, describing it as the “darkest day in our four decades in Britain”. Continue reading...

Park theatre, London

In this week’s newsletter: From couples keen to bring in a third party to exploring your bi-curiosity, the ‘sexologist’ has it all covered in Sex Therapy. Plus: five of the best podcasts with a purpose

Judge in Autopilot death case says defence argument ‘deeply troubling’ and wants Tesla CEO interviewed under oath on safety claimsA California judge has tentatively ordered Elon Musk to be interviewed under oath about whether he made certain statements regarding the capabilities of Tesla’s Autopilot features after the company questioned the authenticity of the remarks, claiming Musk is a “target for deep fakes”.The ruling came in a lawsuit against Tesla, filed by the family of Walter Huang who was killed in a car crash in 2018. Continue reading...

Lawyers for the disgraced entrepreneur told a judge she would not be turning herself in as she is appealing custody rulingTheranos founder Elizabeth Holmes has again delayed the start of her 11-year prison sentence for fraud charges, after appealing a previous decision that would have required her to turn herself in on 27 April.Lawyers for Holmes, who is currently out on bail, informed US district judge Edward Davila on Wednesday that she will not be reporting to prison as scheduled, because she is appealing Davila’s ruling that she remain in custody while it is determined whether she should get a new trial. Continue reading...

CMA surprised sector by saying deal would give Seattle firm undue power to shape cloud gamingMicrosoft’s attempted acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the development conglomerate behind games including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush Saga, has been blocked by the UK’s competition watchdog in a surprise move. The $70bn (£65bn) purchase would have been the largest in gaming history but now, unless the two companies can convince a tribunal to overturn the ban on appeal, it is dead globally.But what does this mean for tech, gaming and Rishi Sunak’s goal for the “Unicorn Kingdom”? Continue reading...

PlayStation 5 (version tested), Xbox Series X/S, PC; Respawn Entertainment/EA

The British comedian shares what makes him laugh online, which is mainly grandmas falling over (don’t worry, no nanas were hurt in the making of this list)

Competition and Markets Authority blocks what would have been biggest acquisition in gaming historyThe Call of Duty developer Activision Blizzard has accused the UK of being “closed for business” after the competition regulator blocked its attempted takeover by Microsoft, which would have been the largest acquisition in gaming history.The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) prevented the $68.7bn (£55bn) cash purchase because of concerns it would squash the cloud gaming market, sparking furious pushback from both sides of the deal. Microsoft said it would “discourage technology innovation and investment in the UK”, while Activision Blizzard vowed to “reassess our growth plans for the UK”. Continue reading...

A few hours with the biggest Nintendo Switch game of the year reveals a world that’s rich with creative potential – and funHowever carefully open-world video games are designed, whatever delights they lay out for you like a buffet of fun-morsels, they can never account for the unpredictably dumb actions of their players. I have been invited to Nintendo’s European headquarters to spend a couple of hours with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, probably this year’s most-anticipated video game, and so with the whole of Hyrule stretched out before me and a tantalising fort full of grimacing Bokoblin monsters to fight just down the hill, I choose to instead spend 20 minutes constructing a flame-throwing fortress on wheels.Using storied adventurer Link’s telekinetic powers to pick stuff up and smoosh it together, I painstakingly line up wheels on wooden bars that I’m using for axels, throw together wooden boards to create a boxy chassis, and take it for a couple of troubleshooting test drives before I attach flamethrowing gargoyle heads to the front. Unfortunately, the flamethrowers unbalance it, and as I careen down the road my self-made vehicle flips over and sets itself on fire. Link falls off and I watch as my hard work turns to literal ashes, its few non-flammable components tumbling unspectacularly to the ground. It turns out you should not try to make a flame-throwing go-kart out of wood. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: Unrecord puts players in the role of a police officer, and looks every bit like real shootings – so how realistic is too realistic?

Canadian singer says she likes the ideas of ‘killing copyright’, as music industry scrambles to catch up with implications of AI-generated tracksGrimes has welcomed musicians to create new songs with her voice using Artificial Intelligence, saying she would split 50% of royalties on any successful AI-generated track that included her voice.The Canadian singer, whose real name is Claire Boucher, tweeted that it was the “same deal as I would with any artist I collab[orate] with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty,” she tweeted. Continue reading...

Redmond-based company exceeded analysts’ estimates, driven by its cloud computing and Office software businessesMicrosoft Corp beat Wall Street’s quarterly revenue and profit estimates on Tuesday, driven by growth in its cloud computing and Office productivity software businesses, and the company said artificial intelligence products were stimulating sales.The company forecast that revenue in its main segments for the current quarter would match or top Wall Street targets. Continue reading...

Google’s parent company reported a revenue of $69.8bn even as it races to implement cost-saving measuresAlphabet stocks rose in after-hours trading on Tuesday after the tech firm beat analyst expectations for first-quarter earnings, marking an unexpectedly bright spot in the otherwise struggling tech sector.The company reported first-quarter revenue of $69.8bn, up 3% year-over-year and above analyst predictions of $68.9bn. Its cloud business reported a profit for the first time since its launch, taking in $191m. Continue reading...

The government must do its bit to make new electric vehicles more affordable if mass adoption is to be achieved on the road to net zeroWhen the government controversially scrapped its discount on the purchase of electric cars last summer, the move was justified on the grounds that its work was done. After 11 years of subsidies, said ministers, the electric vehicle revolution had been “kickstarted”. As Britain strives to meet a 2030 target to end the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles, that judgment is beginning to look a little complacent.Amid ongoing economic headwinds, data has emerged that suggests a drop-off in current demand for electric cars, despite notable public enthusiasm for their adoption in principle. Auto Trader, which hosts the country’s largest car sales website, reported this month that inquiries in relation to new electric vehicles had fallen significantly compared with last year. Continue reading...

Designation as ‘very large online platform’ along with 16 other major names means big penalties for breachesTwitter is among the tech firms that will face the toughest level of scrutiny under a new European Union regulatory regime for monitoring digital platforms, after warnings from Brussels that the Elon Musk-owned platform is unprepared for the new rules.The company, which Musk bought in October 2022, has been designated a “very large online platform” under the bloc’s Digital Services Act, which means complying with measures such as publishing an independent audit of its compliance with the legislation. Continue reading...

Just as SpaceX’s Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly this month, Musk is a mess, too, thanks to Twitter’s blue ticksElon Musk is a man of many talents including, it would seem, resurrecting people from the dead. Over the weekend, a number of notable but no-longer-alive figures, including Anthony Bourdain, Hugo Chávez and Jamal Khashoggi had “blue checkmarks” suddenly appear on their dormant Twitter accounts. When you clicked on the checkmark you were informed that they’d provided their phone numbers to the platform and agreed to pay $8 a month to subscribe to Twitter Blue. The afterlife must be dire if people are signing up for Twitter’s paid features from beyond the grave.It wasn’t just dead celebs being mysteriously verified. The rollout of Twitter Blue was a spectacular mess. Once upon a time, having a blue tick by your name was a status symbol: a sign someone at Twitter HQ thought you were “notable” enough to verify. (Reader, I was not.) Then Musk came along, stripped people of their blue ticks, and said they’d only get the badge back if they paid up. Obviously only a complete loser would do that and the blue tick quickly became a scarlet letter. So when the checks mysteriously reappeared on the accounts of a number of high-profile – and very much alive – figures, including the author Stephen King and basketball star LeBron James, said figures swiftly announced that they hadn’t paid for the badge and wouldn’t be caught dead doing so. All of which would be incredibly embarrassing for Musk if he had any sense of shame. (Reader, he does not.) Continue reading...

From Pac-Man to pinball, French photographer Franck Bohbot transforms the neon chaos of amusement arcades into stunning works of art Continue reading...

Global companies like Google, Apple and Amazon could have to pay penalties of up to 10% of their global turnover as government gives competition watchdog more powerMajor tech firms face the threat of multibillion-pound fines for breaching consumer protection rules under new legislation that will tackle issues including fake online reviews and subscriptions that are difficult to cancel.The digital markets, competition and consumers bill will empower the UK’s competition watchdog to tackle the “excessive dominance” that a small number of tech firms hold over consumers and businesses. Continue reading...

Internet Watch Foundation says amount of material showing most extreme form of sexual abuse has doubled since 2020The most extreme form of child sexual abuse material accounted for a fifth of such content found online last year, according to a report.Category A abuse represented 20% of illegal images discovered online last year by the Internet Watch Foundation, a UK-based body that monitors distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). It found more than 51,000 instances of such content, which can include the most severe imagery including rape, sadism and bestiality.The NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. Continue reading...

Shot at dawn | Emergency alerts at evensong | A message to Airstrip One | Ofsted’s ‘inadequate’ | Jack Nicholson in RedsAlexandra Pearce-Broomhead’s piece (Country diary, 24 April) is probably the most emotionally charged article I’ve seen in over 40 years of reading the Guardian. I have sons the same age as these young men who were shot for supposed crimes such as “desertion” and “cowardice” in the first world war. May my children never have to go through what these young men did.

Verification mark granted to account that was suspended in 2017 but reinstated following takeover by Elon Musk last yearTwitter has given a gold tick to Britain First, the far right political organisation, after a shake-up of its verification system under new owner Elon Musk.The party’s leader, Paul Golding, has also received a blue tick for his account, which means that his posts will be boosted in conversations and will be ranked higher in user searches. Golding was jailed in 2018 for religiously aggravated harassment. Continue reading...

He’s been at PlayStation since the beginning, and seen the games industry transform beyond recognition. He talks unlikely successes, AI, and gaming’s futureIn early 1993, Shuhei Yoshida joined Sony’s nascent PlayStation division as a business development guy – the first member of the team who didn’t have an engineering background. When he was working with Ken Kutaragi and the other architects of the original PlayStation, and later producing games from Crash Bandicoot and Gran Turismo alongside game development legends Mark Cerny and Kazunori Yamauchi, he freely admits that he could scarcely believe his luck. When I speak to him, on the eve of receiving Bafta’s prestigious fellowship award for his contribution to video games, he still seems endearingly surprised by his own success.“The people who have received [this award] before are all creators! Amazing, talented, genius people! I don’t know how I fit in,” he says. (Previous recipients of the award include Shigeru Miyamoto and Hideo Kojima.) “But everybody says I deserve it, so I guess I deserve it.” Continue reading...

On Sunday, millions of phones blared signal simultaneously under government test, but for some it did not go as plannedOn Sunday, millions of phones blared an emergency signal simultaneously under a UK-wide government test. However, a number of handsets received the alert late – or not at all.Here we answer your questions on what happened. Continue reading...

The site will remain online as an archive, alongside the Gawker reboot, the Toast, and a host of other defunct outletsThe closure of BuzzFeed News this week followed a familiar script for those who have followed the rise and fall of digital media. There were Twitter eulogies from current and former staff and op-eds on who was to blame for the site’s mismanagement.Bosses promised to keep the BuzzFeed News site online as an archive, which means, like so many other failed online projects, whatever happened to be on the homepage that day will now be frozen in time forever. In this case: a feature on the history of Midge, Barbie’s pregnant sidekick, an explainer on what to do after “overdosing” on weed and a review of Le Creuset’s new “shallot” cookware shade, which called the color “the trend child of millennial pink and Alison Roman’s shallot pasta”. Continue reading...

This debut feature dissects the ethical dilemmas that arise when an AI is used to entrap paedophiles, but it fails to translate its ideas into a cogent argumentProbing the ethical implications surrounding the use of AI, Franklin Ritch’s debut feature hinges on a high-concept premise: an entirely digital avatar of a young girl named Cherry (Tatum Matthews) is used as bait to trap paedophiles in online chatrooms. Without the signature spectacle of the sci-fi genre, The Artifice Girl is a markedly low-key and small-scale endeavour, steeped in philosophical musings that ultimately seem stagey rather than cinematic.Divided into three chapters spanning decades, the film moves through a series of single locations. It starts in a police interrogation room where Ritch’s Gareth, Cherry’s creator, is questioned by Deena (Sinda Nichols) and Amos (David Girard), members of a taskforce combatting child sexual abuse. Once Gareth reveals Cherry is a virtual being, concerns arise as to whether she can meaningfully consent to interacting with men on a daily basis. As Cherry grows increasingly sentient, the same talking points are reiterated in the second section of the film, as Gareth advocates to transfer Cherry’s intelligence into a physical form. Continue reading...

Regulator calls for better promotion of offers available to low-income households receiving benefitsMore than 4m UK households may be missing out on deeply discounted savings on their broadband bills, the telecoms regulator has said as it called for better promotion of the offers for those receiving benefits.Only 220,000 households have signed up to cheaper social tariffs offered by almost all of the UK’s main broadband providers, according to data published on Monday by Ofcom. Continue reading...

Decision to reinstate ‘verified’ status without distinguishing paid-for from free users prompts criticism for ‘false advertising’Twitter has again U-turned over its verification policy, restoring the “blue tick” free of charge to celebrity users of the social network.But the site’s decision to reinstate the “verified” status without distinguishing between paid-for and free users has led to criticism for false advertising, since the boilerplate disclaimer for those users inaccurately describes their status as being granted “because they are subscribed to Twitter Blue”. Continue reading...

Network’s users report en masse that SMS, accompanied by piercing 10-second tone, never arrived

Many customers on Three network report not receiving the loud alarm meant as a test for future emergencies. This blog is now closed

Google boss says issue keeps him up at night, while thousands have urged six-month pause on creation of ‘giant’ AIsWhen the boss of Google admits to losing sleep over the negative potential of artificial intelligence, perhaps it is time to get worried.Sundar Pichai told the CBS programme 60 Minutes this month that AI could be “very harmful” if deployed wrongly, and was developing fast. “So does that keep me up at night? Absolutely,” he said. Continue reading...

Fake perfumes and restricted items are being touted on social media platform despite bansTikTok is profiting from the sale of illegal and potentially dangerous beauty products, including counterfeit cosmetics and prescription-only skin creams, despite claiming to take a “zero tolerance” approach to rogue sellers.Counterfeit versions of Dior perfumes, Vaseline lip balms and Maybelline mascaras are among products being touted by third-party vendors via TikTok’s in-app marketplace. Continue reading...

On Sunday 23 April at 3pm Britons will receive an alert on their mobile phoneGuardian readers share their views and concerns about the planned first UK nationwide test of the government’s public warning system that will send alerts to UK mobile phones in the event of a disaster. The test will take place at 3pm on Sunday. Continue reading...

AI is already employed in various administrations in the US and its use is only set to grow – but what dangers does it bring?The recent blizzard of warnings about artificial intelligence and how it is transforming learning, upending legal, financial and organizational functions, and reshaping social and cultural interaction, have mostly left out the role it is already playing in governance.Governments in the US at every level are attempting the transition from a programmatic model of service delivery to a citizen-focused model. Continue reading...

Technology company violated US export control laws with shipments to Chinese firm, commerce department saysSeagate Technology Holdings has agreed to pay a $300m penalty in a settlement with US authorities for shipping over $1.1bn worth of hard-disk drives to China’s Huawei in violation of US export control laws, the Department of Commerce said on Wednesday.Seagate sold the drives to Huawei between August 2020 and September 2021 despite an August 2020 rule that restricted sales of certain foreign items made with US technology to the company. Huawei was placed on the Entity List, a US trade blacklist, in 2019 to reduce the sale of US goods to the company amid national security and foreign policy concerns. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: Journalist Frank Swain investigates those who want to reverse ageing to live forever in Buying Time. Plus: five of the best relaxing podcasts

‘MyAI’ service that users can converse and collaborate creatively with had initially only been available to subscribersSnapchat is releasing its GPT-powered AI chatbot to every user for free, the company announced at its annual developer conference, as it tries to chart a distinctive path between the titans of Instagram and TikTok.That means expanding access to its AI chatbot, doubling down on the distinction between public and private posts, and paying successful creators a share of the revenue their viral content generates. Continue reading...

UK regulator asks for views on how move will work in practice, amid concern over tech firm’s cut of in-app purchasesGoogle is to let Android developers bypass in-app payments on its Play app store for the first time, in an effort to head off an investigation from the British competition regulator.But the specifics of the deal to placate the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will give little cause for cheer to independent developers who have been campaigning against “app store taxes”, since Google will continue to collect a “service fee” for all eligible purchases on its platform. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: Party quiz games, an interactive thriller, a dungeon crawler and more – your split-screen multiplayer recommendations are an inspiration. Here’s are some of the best

Deep Silver; PC, PS4/5, Xbox Series X/S

Players have long found a refuge from grief in video games – and a recent wave of games is tackling this difficult theme head-onWhen James’s father died, he did what any of us would do in the throes of grief: he sought comfort. He went looking for it in the expected places – friends, family – but he found it somewhere unexpected: in the video game The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.“Dad had always loved games. He gave me his NES when he got the SNES, and my formative memories were playing Mario Kart 64 with him, my uncle, and my little sister. Shortly after my father passed, the Wii added some N64 games to its catalogue that I had loved to play growing up, and that started the journey I needed to take to forgive him,” says James. “I had felt abandoned by him – when I was right at the shifting point of puberty, about to learn how to drive, he just wasn’t there. Continue reading...

Cabinet Office secretary, Oliver Dowden, to issue national alert and urge companies to boost cybersecurityRussian hackers organised along the lines of the paramilitary Wagner group are seeking “to disrupt or destroy” parts of the UK’s critical national infrastructure, a cabinet minister will warn at a cyber conference in Belfast on Wednesday.Oliver Dowden, the Cabinet Office minister, will issue a national alert to key businesses amid growing international concern that as Russia struggles in Ukraine, an under-pressure Kremlin is searching for new ways to threaten the west. Continue reading...

Streaming giant announces DVD-by-mail service to be wound down at the end of SeptemberIt’s time to say goodbye to those red envelopes. Netflix announced on Tuesday that it would end 25 years of mailing DVDs of shows and movies to its subscribers.Netflix’s co-chief executive Ted Sarandos said mailing DVDs had “paved the way for the shift to streaming”, but that “after an incredible 25-year run, we’ve made the difficult decision to wind down at the end of September”. Continue reading...

The German artist caused uproar this week when he revealed the shot that won a prestigious award wasn’t what it seemed. But, he insists, AI isn’t about sidelining humans – it’s about liberating artistsSince 52-year-old German artist Boris Eldagsen went public with the fact that he won a Sony world photography award with an AI-generated image, relations between him and the award body have soured. The World Photography Organisation has issued a statement, saying: “We no longer feel we are able to engage in a meaningful and constructive dialogue with him.” His website reads: “Sony: Stop saying nonsense!”“I don’t know why they behaved like this,” he says, speaking to me from Berlin on the morning after the controversy broke. But I have a fair idea: plainly, they feel like they were conned, and had their aesthetic discernment called into question. If you can’t tell the difference between a photograph and an AI-generated image, then you may as well go home. (Boris Eldagsen has said that, prior to being informed of his win, he had not provided any information to the World Photography Organisation that the image was AI-generated; the organisation says that the judges were always aware this was an image created using elements of AI.) Continue reading...

A new album – full of Oasis-esque anthems – imagines what might have been if the band’s classic lineup had continued making music. So, we ask its human co-creators, what’s the story?Before you do anything else with your day, you need to listen to this. A new “lost” Oasis album has been released, from the period between their third album, 1997’s Be Here Now, and their fourth, 2000’s Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. Except, of course, it’s fake. It was created by AI – or at least, it’s an AI Liam Gallagher doing its best “hellooooos” and “sun-shiiiines” over a real band. But the eight songs, including Out of My Mind, Coming of Age and Forever, are practically indistinguishable from the real thing, with some seriously catchy melodies that give every post-What’s the Story album – not to mention the whole of Liam and Noel’s solo catalogues – a run for their money. So who made it? How do you get a computer to sing like Liam? And why would you want to?“We just got bored waiting for Oasis to re-form,” says Bobby Geraghty, a 32-year-old singer, songwriter and producer. “All we have now is Liam and his brother trying to outdo each other. But that isn’t Oasis. So we got an AI-modelled Liam to step in on some tunes that were originally written for a short-lived but much-loved band called Breezer.” Continue reading...

The Tesla founder has broken ground on a plot in Texas, while Google and Meta are building workers’ homes in California. Should we be celebrating or worrying?Welcome to Snailbrook, Texas. Established: 2021. Population: about 12, but with many more to come. In fact, in a decade or two, Snailbrook could be a gleaming, utopian city, shaped by the futuristic vision of the unavoidable tech titan of our day, Elon Musk.Musk is moving into Texas big time. According to reports, he has quietly bought as many as 2,430 hectares (6,000 acres) in the Austin area – where his core business, Tesla, has been headquartered since 2021 – upon which factories and facilities are under construction for the rocket company SpaceX and the tunnelling company Boring (whose mascot is a snail, hence the town’s name). Now, Musk is adding housing for workers (which reportedly will be more affordable to rent than that in Austin) and Boring executives are talking of building an entire city. Should we be celebrating or worrying? Continue reading...