by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5NKDC)
They are good for the environment and your wallet but there can be pitfalls. Here’s how to grab a bargain safely in the UKSmartphones are a key part of modern life but with prices routinely in excess of £1,000 for the latest high-end handsets, should you be considering cheaper secondhand or refurbished models instead?These have the potential to be good for your wallet and the planet, as any device that is given a second life instead of being recycled reduces its lifetime environmental impact and, with it, your footprint. Continue reading...
Musk said he would probably launch a humanoid robot prototype next year, which is designed to do 'boring, repetitious and dangerous' work.The billionaire chief executive of Tesla said the robot, which would be about 5ft 8in (1.7 metres) tall and weigh 56kg, would be able to handle tasks such as attaching bolts to cars with a spanner or picking up groceries at shops.Musk was speaking at Tesla's AI Day event, but gave no indication of having made concrete progress on actually building such a machine. At the point when a normal tech launch might feature a demonstration of a prototype model, Musk instead brought out an actor in a bodysuit, who proceeded to breakdance to a soundtrack of electronic dance music
The quest to prevent batteries – rich in raw materials such as cobalt, lithium and nickel – ending up as a mountain of wasteA tsunami of electric vehicles is expected in rich countries, as car companies and governments pledge to ramp up their numbers – there are predicted be 145m on the roads by 2030. But while electric vehicles can play an important role in reducing emissions, they also contain a potential environmental timebomb: their batteries.By one estimate, more than 12m tons of lithium-ion batteries are expected to retire between now and 2030. Continue reading...
She has a learning disability and doesn’t know what in-app purchases areI recently found out that my sister, who has a learning disability, unwittingly spent more than £1,100 on 83 Apple purchases over four weeks. She enjoys playing word games and colouring on her iPad, but has no understanding of money or how in-app purchases work. Until last year, her husband managed her finances, but he died. Most of the transactions were repeat purchases of items called “bundles”. She has no idea what they are and hasn’t downloaded them, but Apple is refusing a refund.
by Hannah J Davies and Charlie Phillips on (#5NJ4N)
From sexual revolution to the suffragettes, Fry examines Edward VII’s reign in his polished new series. Plus: grim and gruesome deathbed confessionsStephen Fry’s Edwardian Secrets
The agency also dismissed a request by the tech giant that chair Lina Khan recuse herself from the caseThe Federal Trade Commission on Thursday refiled its antitrust case against Facebook, arguing the company holds monopoly power in social networking and renewing the fight to rein in big tech.The agency also dismissed a request from Facebook that its chair, Lina Khan, step aside in the case because of her criticism of them in the past. Continue reading...
CEO says problem is primarily one of ‘vaccine hesitancy’ among the US public, touting platform’s vaccine literacy toolFacebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg skirted a question on Thursday about coronavirus vaccine disinformation on the social network, choosing to phrase the problem instead as primarily one of “vaccine hesitancy” among the US public.In an interview with CBS, which was released on Thursday morning, TV anchor Gayle King pressed Zuckerberg to release information on how many people have viewed and shared Facebook posts containing misinformation about the Covid vaccine. Continue reading...
by Helen Davidson, Vincent Ni and Leyland Cecco on (#5NH7J)
The executive’s case has sent China’s relations with the US and Canada plummeting with accusations of political arrests and ‘hostage diplomacy’Until she was detained at Vancouver airport in December 2018, Meng Wanzhou was not a household name. But the 49-year-old Huawei executive has now become the face of a high-stakes trilateral dispute between China, Canada and the US.Related: Meng Wanzhou extradition case wraps up but verdict will take months Continue reading...
We ask funny people about what’s funny online. Comedian Alexei Toliopoulos dives so deep he hasn’t seen the surface in yearsMy whole life is a deep dive into the mysteries of pop culture. I don’t think I’ve seen the surface in years and it’s likely I have a permanent case of the bends.
Social security numbers, names, phone numbers and account pins were exposed in some cases, according to the companyA security breach against T-Mobile has exposed personal information, including social security numbers (SSN) and pins in some cases, of more than 40 million users, the company said in a statement on Wednesday morning.The same data for about 7.8 million current T-Mobile post-paid customers appears to be compromised. No phone numbers, account numbers, pins, passwords or financial information from the nearly 50m records and accounts were compromised, it said. Continue reading...
Up for discussion in the Guardian tech newsletter: Instagram, Tik Tok and YouTube implement new rules … CGI CEOs … and unpleasant rightwing ‘lolz’ in KabulI bring good news: regulation works.The last month has brought a flurry of changes to major tech platforms related to child safety online, and specifically to the use and protection of children’s personal data. Continue reading...
I blew the whistle on inauthentic behavior at Facebook. But authentic misinformation is the bigger problem in the westOn 18 May 2021, German YouTuber Mirko Drotschmann tweeted an unusual message: a marketing agency was asking him to share allegedly leaked documents on Covid-19 vaccine deaths. Within a week, French YouTuber Léo Grasset shared similar news. News reports followed: Fazze, a London-based marketing firm with ties to Russia, was offering money to influencers to falsely disparage a Covid-19 vaccine.Related: Facebook shut down our research into its role in spreading disinformation | Laura Edelson and Damon McCoy Continue reading...
Sinead Stubbins is the first to admit she might know a bit too much about the British personality. Is it creepy? Maybe. Maybe not? Who knows• Internet Wormhole is a new column where Guardian Australia writers take you on a tour of their online obsession. Click here for moreLast year, I spent a lot of time staring intently into a computer screen at a person who does not know I exist. Let’s just say if restraining orders were determined by hours spent watching someone’s YouTube channel, British model, designer and TV presenter Alexa Chung would have a pretty decent case against me.Alexa Chung’s YouTube channel started in 2018 with sporadic videos promoting her clothing label and for the last couple of years has included tutorials (for makeup, skincare and how to dress), field trips to fashion shows and interviews with other glamorous, tousled hair women in which they give advice about dating or sleeping or throwing dinner parties from their tranquil, presumably-Santal 33-scented apartments. Continue reading...
Mining cryptocurrency requires lots of cheap energy and many miners have settled on Texas as their destinationIn the middle of rural Texas, a cryptocurrency mine is currently under construction.Hundreds of machines more powerful than the average computer will soon be housed in this 320-acre mining facility in Dickens county, where they will work day and night to solve a complex series of algorithms. If successful, the reward will be newly minted bitcoin, currently worth about $44,000 each. Continue reading...
Lawsuit filed after Blue Origin offered Nasa $2bn if it would change its mind on lunar lander contractJeff Bezos’s Blue Origin has sued the US government over Nasa’s decision to award a $2.9bn lunar lander contract to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.Related: Billionaire space cowboys could become heroes by focusing on the climate crisis Continue reading...
• Investigators to review 765,000 vehicles made since 2014• NHTSA identifies 11 crashes involving first responder vehiclesThe US government has opened a formal investigation into Tesla’s driver-assistance system known as Autopilot after a series of collisions with parked emergency vehicles.The investigation covers 765,000 vehicles, almost everything that Tesla has sold in the US since the start of the 2014 model year. Of the crashes identified by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) as part of the investigation, 17 people were injured and one was killed. Continue reading...
Schools already have pupils’ mobile phone use under control, say leaders in response to government plansSchool and college leaders have condemned the government’s plan to ban mobile phones from classrooms as outdated and out of touch, arguing that schools should be allowed to decide on appropriate rules.Responding to a Department for Education (DfE) consultation on student behaviour, the Association of School and College Leaders said education leaders already had student mobile phone use under control and warned that some students, such as those caring for a relative, may be disadvantaged by a strict approach. Continue reading...
Within weeks of Khan’s appointment as FTC chair, Facebook and Amazon asked that she be recused from antitrust investigationsLina Khan has some of the biggest companies in the world shaking in their boots.The 32-year-old antitrust scholar and law professor in June became the youngest person in history and the most progressive in more than a decade to be appointed as chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Continue reading...
The artist and social media critic on his work subverting the manipulative practices of Facebook, Instagram and TwitterWhen the history of the first decades of this century comes to be written, there will be few more telling artworks than Ben Grosser’s film Order of Magnitude. In the 47 minute video, Grosser, a digital artist and professor of new media at the University of Illinois, has spliced together every public instance in which Mark Zuckerberg has talked of “more” and “bigger”. The resulting montage of interviews and presentations is a fast forward of the rapid growth of Facebook as, in the chief executive’s mouth, thousands become millions then billions. It makes a mesmerising monologue, the story of our times.“The idea that Zuckerberg latched on to even more than anyone else in Silicon Valley,” Grosser suggested, when he spoke to me from Urbana via Zoom last week, “was the need to grow as big as fast as possible, get the largest market share. And everything was subservient to that.” The film is part of a double act. Grosser has also spliced together all the moments he can find of Zuckerberg ever mentioning numbers diminishing or things getting smaller. This film runs for 30 seconds, though in a new version for his forthcoming exhibition at the Arebyte Gallery in London, he has slowed those seconds down so it also runs for 47 minutes. Continue reading...
Brits didn’t ditch pizza and curry takeaways after lockdown ended, but delivery firms’ valuations don’t reflect thisOrdering a takeaway and sitting down with a box set was the height of entertainment for most people during successive coronavirus lockdowns – and this served up bumper sales and profits for a string of food delivery companies.But now that restaurants, cafes and other hospitality venues have reopened, will consumers lose their taste for ordering and go back to eating out? Continue reading...
The tech giant says its iCloud security update is designed to help weed out images of abuse their children, but activists have voiced concernsOnce upon a time, updates of computer operating systems were of interest only to geeks. No longer – at least in relation to Apple’s operating systems, iOS and Mac OS. You may recall how Version 14.5 of iOS, which required users to opt in to tracking, had the online advertising racketeers in a tizzy while their stout ally, Facebook, stood up for them. Now, the forthcoming version of iOS has libertarians, privacy campaigners and “thin-end-of-the-wedge” worriers in a spin.It also has busy mainstream journalists struggling to find headline-friendly summaries of what Apple has in store for us. “Apple is prying into iPhones to find sexual predators, but privacy activists worry governments could weaponise the feature” was how the venerable Washington Post initially reported it. This was, to put it politely, a trifle misleading and the first three paragraphs below the headline were, as John Gruber brusquely pointed out, plain wrong. Continue reading...
The company’s hostility to academic scrutiny limits our ability to understand how the platform amplifies political falsehoodsLast week, Facebook disabled our personal accounts, obstructing the research we lead at New York University to study the spread of disinformation on the company’s platform. The move has already compromised our work – forcing us to suspend our investigations into Facebook’s role in amplifying vaccine misinformation, sowing distrust in our elections and fomenting the violent riots at the US Capitol on 6 January.But even more important than the effect on our work is what Facebook’s hostility toward outside scrutiny means for the many other researchers and journalists trying to study Facebook’s effects on society. We’ve already heard from other researchers planning similar projects who are now pulling back. If Facebook has its way, there will be no independent research of its platform. Continue reading...
CMA says sometimes only credits were offered, and it wants swift change or court action could followCustomers of the deals website Groupon who were told by the firm they had to accept a credit note could be due cash refunds after the UK’s competition watchdog ordered the company to improve the way it treats users or face legal action.The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said this week it had found evidence that Groupon does not always provide customers with refunds or replacement items when there is a problem with an order. Shoppers have sometimes only been offered Groupon “credits”, potentially breaking consumer law, it says. Continue reading...
After years trying for a child without success, I sought solace in online message boards. Before long, I was spending hours a day poring over intimate posts, sharing everything with total strangers. Would it help?Leanne was having her fringe cut when she was offered fertility drugs. It was leftover stock from her hairdresser’s treatment and she was giving it to Leanne for free on condition that she dispose of the packaging, as it was labelled with the hairdresser’s name and address. Leanne accepted the drugs – it would save months on NHS waiting lists.A couple of weeks later, Leanne began taking the hormones that would stimulate her ovaries. There was no doctor overseeing the process, no scan or blood test, so Leanne had no idea whether her body was responding correctly. Instead of medical supervision, she followed the advice of several women in a fertility forum. When the pills gave her vertigo, it was these strangers who advised that she should take them at night “so you sleep through the worst of the side-effects”. Continue reading...
Still-unidentified hacker claims attack was carried out ‘for fun’ to ‘expose the vulnerability’ of platformThe hacker responsible for one of the world’s largest digital coin heists has returned nearly all of their more than $610m (£440m) haul, reportedly saying they did it “for fun” and to expose a vulnerability.The victim, Poly Network, which until Tuesday’s heist was a little known peer-to-peer cryptocurrency platform, said all of the funds except for $33m-worth of the digital coin Tether, which were frozen earlier in the week, had been transferred to a wallet controlled by both the platform and the hacker. Continue reading...
Billionaire vice-chair was serving 30-month sentence for bribing country’s former presidentThe billionaire boss of South Korea’s Samsung empire has been released from prison after serving 18 months of a 30-month sentence for bribing the former president of South Korea Park Geun-hye.Lee Jae-yong, Samsung’s vice-chair and de facto leader, apologised to the country for his actions upon his release from Seoul detention centre. “I’ve caused much concern for the people. I deeply apologise,” Lee, 53, told reporters on Friday. “I am listening to the concerns, criticisms, worries and high expectations for me. I will work hard.” Continue reading...
The decade that began with the GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox, and ended with the Wii, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, saw huge technical advances and remarkable innovations in storytelling and gameplay – these are the standout games of the noughties(Valve, 2008) Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5N9B7)
New Android phone offers most of what makes the best phones great, but is half the price at £399The Nord 2 is the latest mid-range smartphone from OnePlus that offers near top-level performance but at half the price of its flagship devices.Priced from £399, it sits below the £629 OnePlus 9 and £829 9 Pro and follows on from the successful first Nord. Continue reading...
by Hannah Verdier, Hannah J Davies and Shivani Dave on (#5N997)
Paolo Macchiarini is the subject of the latest series of the hit medical malpractice series. Plus: Fonejacker is back, and LOUD celebrates chart-topping music genre reggaetonDr Death (available from 16 Aug)
Social networking firm introduces range of child safety measures including increased privacy controlsTikTok will prevent teenagers from receiving notifications past their bedtime, the company said, announcing a range of child safety improvements that will arrive just before the UK introduces its age appropriate design code next month.The company will no longer send push notifications after 9pm to users aged between 13 and 15. For 16-year-olds and those aged 17 notifications will not be sent after 10pm. Continue reading...
Technology executive Ron Black says nine companies are willing to join consortium in purchase of Newport Wafer FabThree more British companies have said they are willing to join a group to buy the Welsh semiconductor manufacturer Newport Wafer Fab if the UK government blocks a takeover by a Chinese-owned company on national security grounds.The technology executive Ron Black said the new companies had come forward after he revealed the existence of a six-member consortium willing to act as a “white knight” if Nexperia’s purchase of the south Wales company fell through. Continue reading...
Site aims to integrate service with Instagram which ‘could see Facebook withdrawing gifs from competing platforms’Facebook could be forced to sell gif creation website Giphy after an investigation by the UK competition regulator found its takeover could harm competition among social media companies and the digital advertising market.The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an in-depth investigation earlier this year into Facebook’s acquisition of Giphy, the largest supplier of animated gifs to social networks such as Snapchat, TikTok and Twitter, after identifying a number of concerns about the $400m (£290m) deal which was struck last year. Continue reading...
Video platform suspends Republican senator, in latest move against a public figure who has spread Covid disinformationYouTube suspended Republican senator Rand Paul on Tuesday for seven days over a video claiming that masks are ineffective against Covid-19.It is the latest move against a prominent public figure who has spread disinformation about ways to protect against the virus or about the vaccines developed to fight it. Continue reading...
The poster for new film Parallel Mothers, which depicts a female nipple, was removed from the social network but has been restored because of ‘clear artistic context’Instagram has apologised for removing the official poster for Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s new film from the social network because it showed a female nipple, after the poster’s designer complained of censorship.Instagram’s parent company, Facebook, told the Associated Press on Wednesday that several images of the poster for Parallel Mothers (Madres Paralelas), which shows a lactating nipple, were removed “for breaking our rules against nudity” after they were uploaded on Monday. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5N6VP)
New flip phones and phone-tablet hybrids, plus updated earbuds and first Google Wear OS 3 smartwatchSamsung is taking a big step towards making folding-screen smartphones mainstream with the launch of a pair of the first water-resistant models as part of its big tech event for the second half of 2021.The new and improved Galaxy Z Flip3 folding-screen flip-phone and Z Fold3 folding phone-tablet hybrid were announced on Wednesday during a livestreamed event, alongside a Google watch co-developed in an attempt to take on the dominant Apple Watch – the Galaxy Watch4. Continue reading...
The classic grinning emoji has once more changed its meaning – at least amongst gen Zers. So what is it communicating now – and what should you be using instead?
Near-future tale of a woman who accepts a male ‘companion’ robot played by Stevens is laboriously told and not really funny enoughDirected by Maria Schrader, this was a crowd-pleasing favourite at the Berlin film festival earlier this year and its star, Maren Eggert, won the festival’s new gender-neutral best leading performance prize. But I was disappointed with a film whose crises and dilemmas seem laborious and essentially predictable; it does not fully work as sci-fi or satire or comedy.We are in a world of the near-future (and the city of Berlin itself is certainly very plausible as its location). Eggert plays Alma, an archaeologist with an unhappy and frustrating personal life. She is persuaded by her boss to be a guinea-pig for a new hi-tech scheme: she will road-test a male “companion” robot, programmed to be infinitely considerate and obliging, which will attend to all her emotional and indeed physical needs. So Alma sceptically takes home this dashing humanoid geisha: Tom, played with elegant, fluent German by Dan Stevens. And after a rocky, angry start, after duly dismissing this soulless adventure in existential convenience, Alma inevitably comes to think that there could be something to it. In rejecting Tom, is she simply preferring the headache to the aspirin? Continue reading...
Silicon Valley has been anticipating virtual reality for more than three decades, and keeps running into the same problem: people mostly like actual realityMaybe this will be my Paul Krugman moment. The Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist was famously the winner of a study to establish which op-ed commentator was most consistently correct. In 1998, he also famously claimed, “By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.” I am not nearly so storied in accomplishments as Krugman. But I do make my living offering predictions and forecasts. So I might as well say it: I predict that the metaverse won’t happen.The “metaverse,” for those who don’t know, is a still-mostly-hypothetical virtual world accessed by special virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology. The idea is to create a sort of next-level Internet overlaid on our physical world. People plugged into the metaverse exist in our physical world like everyone else but can see and interact with things that others can’t. Think The Matrix or the Star Trek Holodeck or the Fortnite-esque brandscapes of Ready Player One. Continue reading...
Company pays $3,500 to Bogdan Kulynych who demonstrated flaw in image cropping softwareTwitter’s image cropping algorithm prefers younger, slimmer faces with lighter skin, an investigation into algorithmic bias at the company has found.The finding, while embarrassing for the company, which had previously apologised to users after reports of bias, marks the successful conclusion of Twitter’s first ever “algorithmic bug bounty”. Continue reading...
Billionaire Lee Jae-yong will be released in South Korea on Friday having served 18 months in prisonThe billionaire boss of South Korea’s Samsung empire will be freed from jail on Friday after serving part of a 30-month sentence for bribing former South Korea president Park Geun-hye.
Project that could bring fibre broadband to remote areas while monitoring pipes for water leaksThe government has launched a £4m fund to back projects trialling running fibre optic broadband cables through water pipes to help connect hard-to-reach homes without digging up roads.The money will also be used to test out monitors in pipes that can help water companies identify and repair leaks more quickly. About a fifth of water put into public supply every day is lost via leaks and it is hoped that sensors could help deliver water companies’ commitment to reduce water loss by half. Continue reading...
On the surface Apple’s new features sound both sensible and commendable – but they also open a Pandora’s box of privacy and surveillance issuesPrivacy. That’s (no longer) iPhone. Continue reading...
by Robin McKie Observer science editor on (#5N2BB)
UK National Cyber Security Centre recommends approach for improved combination of usability and safetyIt is much better to concoct passwords for online accounts that are made up of three random words as opposed to creating complex variations of letters, numbers and symbols, government experts have said.In a blogpost, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) – which is part of Government Communications Headquarters – said a three-word system creates passwords that are easy to remember. In addition, it creates unusual combinations of letters, which means the system is strong enough to keep online accounts secure from cybercriminals. By contrast, more complex passwords can be ineffective as their makeup can often be guessed by criminals using specialist software. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian