Technology | The Guardian

Several agencies are investigating the company’s workings post former employee Frances Haugen’s extensive document leakOn Tuesday, Facebook told its employees to preserve internal documents and communications for legal reasons, as governments and regulators have opened inquiries into its operations amid an onslaught of revelations from whistleblower documents.A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to Reuters that the company sent a legal hold notice to all personnel for documents. “Document preservation requests are part of the process of responding to legal inquiries,” the spokesperson added. Continue reading...

Banning anonymous social media accounts could backfire, says Keith Flett. Plus letters from John Freeman and Paul KomierowskiOwen Jones (Banning anonymous social media accounts would only stifle free speech and democracy, 25 October) is right that the online safety bill requires serious consideration. There are real abuses that need to be tackled, but that must not mean a wider trawl to censor opinion critical of authority and the government.We have been here before, when letters were the means used to deliver threats in the early 19th century. EP Thompson reviewed some of the letters in his essay The Crime of Anonymity and discovered a wide range of issues, from personal threats to industrial grievances. In many cases, the authors were brought to trial and sentenced to transportation or death. Continue reading...

Analysis identifies 83 accounts behind 70% of tweets abusing Duchess and Duke of SussexThe Duchess of Sussex, who has said she avoids social media for “my own self-preservation”, has been the subject of a coordinated hate and misinformation campaign on Twitter, according to a new report.Both she and Prince Harry, who are advocates for healthier social media, have been targeted on the platform, with Meghan receiving about 80% of the abuse, according to the Twitter analytics provider Bot Sentinel. Continue reading...

US firm Amazon Web Services to host classified material for GCHQ, MI5 and MI6, raising sovereignty concernsPriti Patel is under pressure to disclose whether the UK’s most sensitive national security secrets could be at risk after the disclosure that its spy agencies signed a cloud contract with Amazon Web Services (AWS).Labour is demanding that the home secretary explain why GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 will use a high-security system provided by the US-based firm, and whether any risk assessment was undertaken before the deal was signed. Continue reading...

We’ve known that Facebook is lawless and reckless for years. But lawlessness pays – so don’t expect it to changeFacebook is having a rough go of it these days, so you might expect the company to be in trouble. For instance, at one Senate judiciary hearing, the Republican senator John Kennedy of Louisiana let Facebook’s Colin Stretch have it.Kennedy confronted Stretch, the company’s former general counsel, with a report that Facebook can micro-target emotionally vulnerable teens, asking: “Was that reporting wrong?” Stretch responded with a standard Facebook line: “That reporting relied on an internal document that was overstated.” It didn’t satisfy Kennedy. “Your power sometimes scares me,” he said. Another day, another PR black eye for Facebook. Continue reading...

PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series X/S, Nintendo Switch; Eidos Montréal/Square Enix

Researchers use AI – and witchcraft folklore – to map the coronavirus conspiracy theories that have sprung upResearchers have mapped the web of connections underpinning coronavirus conspiracy theories, opening a new way of understanding and challenging them.

The use of our bodies to unlock access to services raises concerns about the trade-off between convenience and privacyIn a school canteen in Gateshead, cameras scan the faces of children, taking payment automatically after identifying them with facial recognition. More than 200 miles away in North London, staff at a care home recently took part in a trial that used facial data to verify their Covid-19 vaccine status. And in convenience stores around the country, staff are alerted to potential shoplifters by a smart CCTV system that taps into a database of individuals deemed suspect.In each case, biometric data has been harnessed to try to save time and money. But the growing use of our bodies to unlock areas of the public and private sphere has raised questions about everything from privacy to data security and racial bias. Continue reading...

Hi-tech Bluetooth glasses come with clear or tinted lenses and range of frames, but cannot be repairedTrue smart glasses may be a way off from being useful, or even wanted, but glasses that double as headphones are getting thinner, lighter and better looking. Now the Austrian firm Fauna wants to beat Bose at its own game.The Fauna audio glasses come in a range of designs with clear and tinted lenses costing from £199 (€199/$199) – shown here in Spiro transparent brown – and unlike some competitors they can be equipped with prescription lenses and fitted to your head by an optician. Continue reading...

Papers reveal struggle to tackle hate speech and reluctance to censor rightwing US news organisationsFacebook has admitted core parts of its platform appear hardwired for spreading misinformation and divisive content, according to a fresh wave of internal documents that showed the social media company struggled to contain hate speech in the developing world and was reluctant to censor rightwing US news organisations.An internal memo warned that Facebook’s “core product mechanics”, or the basics of how the product worked, had let hate speech and misinformation grow on the platform. The memo added that the basic functions of Facebook were “not neutral”. Continue reading...

Roundup of what we have learned after release of papers and whistleblower’s testimony to MPsFacebook has been at the centre of a wave of damaging revelations after a whistleblower released tens of thousands of internal documents and testified about the company’s inner workings to US senators.Frances Haugen left Facebook in May with a cache of memos and research that have exposed the inner workings of the company and the impact its platforms have on users. The first stories based on those documents were published by the Wall Street Journal in September. Continue reading...

My father, John Owen, who has died aged 90, was among the electrical engineers who developed the electron microscope and later became a British and international standards officer.John was born in Liverpool and grew up in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, the son of Ethel (nee Grain), a teacher, and John Owen, a tailor’s cutter and a Co-operative and Labour party councillor. Continue reading...

Ex-employee tells UK MPs Mark Zuckerberg ‘has unilateral control over 3bn people’ due to his positionMark Zuckerberg “has unilateral control over 3 billion people” due to his unassailable position at the top of Facebook, the whistleblower Frances Haugen told MPs as she called for urgent external regulation to rein in the tech company’s management and reduce the harm being done to society.Haugen, a former Facebook employee who released tens of thousands of damaging documents about its inner workings, travelled to London from the US for a parliamentary hearing and gave qualified backing to UK government proposals to regulate social media platforms and make them take some responsibility for content on their sites. Continue reading...

Jeremy Fleming says ransomware is proliferating as it is ‘largely uncontested’ and highly profitableThe head of the UK spy agency GCHQ has disclosed that the number of ransomware attacks on British institutions has doubled in the past year.Jeremy Fleming, the director of GCHQ, said locking files and data on a user’s computer and demanding payment for their release had become increasingly popular among criminals because it was “largely uncontested” and highly profitable. Continue reading...

The rental car company says 20% of its cars will be electric by 2023, with Tesla’s Model 3s available starting next monthHertz, the global rental car company, has ordered 100,000 Tesla vehicles in a deal worth $4.2bn to the leading electric vehicle manufacturer that represents the first effort by the rental giants to electrify their fleets.The Tesla Model 3 sedans will be delivered over the next 14 months, and will be available to rent from Hertz in the US and parts of Europe from next month, the rental company said in a statement. Continue reading...

Threatening online messages to politicians should be taken seriously – but this move is misguidedThe aftermath of the horrific killing of Conservative MP David Amess should have been a moment for politicians and the public to unite in an effort to protect democracy. Instead, the discussion has been derailed by a push to ban anonymous social media accounts, which would stifle free speech and democratic rights.Threatening online messages to politicians and other public figures should be taken seriously. As someone who has experienced online abuse, and a physical attack at the hands of the far right, I know all too well the danger. But, in this tragic event, there seems to be no known connection between the death of Amess and anonymous online posting.Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Envision’s Sunderland plant produces batteries for the Nissan Leaf and other electric vehiclesThe Chinese owner of the UK’s only large-scale battery factory has revealed plans for a big expansion that will put the plant in Sunderland among the biggest electric vehicle facilities in Europe.Envision said annual capacity at the plant would eventually rise to 38 gigawatt hours (GWh), an increase from a previous plan of 11GWh that was announced in July as part of a supply deal for the Japanese carmaker Nissan’s Sunderland plant. Continue reading...

Detective fiction tells a story pieced together by some clever person – and in a video game, that’s youIn one of her best books, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie puts these words into the mouth of her least favourite character, Hercule Poirot: “Understand this, I mean to arrive at the truth. The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it.”All detective stories are an attempt to reflect this. Uncovering the truth through clever reasoning, observation and logic is wondrous. You are forced to look at the world anew: a misplaced chair is no longer just a chair, but indicative of a killer’s escape; a removed lightbulb tells us the killer did not want to be seen. In the eyes of a detective (or a great detective writer), everyday objects are imbued with alien significance. They no longer fit where we think they fit and when we find their proper place, a clear picture emerges. Poirot was a great detective because he obsessed over order and was more sensitive to misplacement. Sherlock Holmes could see tiny stains on a hat and understand the entire life of its wearer. Continue reading...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nintendo Switch; Mercury Steam/Nintendo

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

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

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