by Hannah Verdier, Hannah J Davies and Hattie Moir on (#5PMVV)
The writer and activist’s new show focuses on stories of personal growth, from the likes of Mabel and Olly Alexander. Plus: a shocking unsolved case is reopened in SuspectThe Way We Are with Munroe Bergdorf
Artificial intelligence will be used to develop personalised treatments while investigating role of geneticsThe pharmaceuticals firm GSK has struck a five-year partnership with King’s College London to use artificial intelligence to develop personalised treatments for cancer by investigating the role played by genetics in the disease.The tie-up, which involves 10 of the drug maker’s artificial intelligence experts working with 10 oncology specialists from King’s across their labs, will use computing to “play chess with cancer”, working out why only a fifth of patients respond well to immuno-oncology treatments. Continue reading...
Creator of the landmark ZX Spectrum and the less commercially successful C5 died after a long illnessSir Clive Sinclair, the inventor and entrepreneur who was instrumental in bringing home computers to the masses, has died at the age of 81.His daughter, Belinda, said he died at home in London on Thursday morning after a long illness. Sinclair invented the pocket calculator but was best known for popularising the home computer, bringing it to British high-street stores at relatively affordable prices. Continue reading...
Executive was found to be buying artworks shortly before they were promoted on site’s front pageA non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace has introduced policies to ban insider trading, after an executive at the company was discovered to be buying artworks shortly before they were promoted on the site’s front page.OpenSea, one of the leading sites for trading the digital assets, will now prevent team members buying or selling from featured collections and from using confidential information to trade NFTs. Neither practice was previously banned. Continue reading...
Delivery drivers and warehouse workers are already monitored relentlessly. Now white-collar employees are getting a taste of surveillance capitalismThe corporate handwringing started at almost the same time as the lockdown orders: “But if all of our workers are at home, where we can’t see them, how can we possibly know that they’re actually working?”Leave it to the tech creeps to figure out a solution to reassure your boss, miles away, that you are indeed doing what you are being paid to do. Writing in the Guardian, Sandy Milne recently reported on the rise of “bossware” or “tattleware”, essentially spyware that enables managers to monitor their employees working from home. That includes a new program called Sneek, which uses your webcam to take a photo of you about once a minute and makes it available to your supervisor, to prove that you are not away from your desk doing God knows what. You’re not warned in advance, so the photograph that Sneek takes can catch you doing pretty much anything – picking spinach out of your teeth, smelling your own armpit, or any of the other totally normal things human beings do when alone but that no one really wants documented and distributed. It’s a level of invasion that would horrify even the NSA. Continue reading...
Geofence location and keyword warrants are new law enforcement tools that have privacy experts concernedIt was a routine bike ride around the neighborhood that landed Zachary McCoy in the crosshairs of the Gainesville, Florida, police department.In January 2020, an alarming email from Google landed in McCoy’s inbox. Police were requesting his user data, the company told him, and McCoy had seven days to go to court and block its release. Continue reading...
Decades-old video game consoles such as Atari 2600, Mega Drive and NES are seeing a wave of new games released on old-school cartridges. Who’s making them, and why?This year, veteran video game developers Garry Kitchen and David Crane released a new game for the Atari 2600 – despite the fact that the console was discontinued some 30 years ago. And they’re not the only ones. Companies such as Limited Run Games and Strictly Limited Games are manufacturing brand new cartridges, and sometimes never-before-released games, for consoles that predate the smartphone. “The market’s not remotely dead for these consoles,” says Josh Fairhurst, head of North Carolina-based Limited Run. “There’s a lot of demand, and it’s only growing.”Prices for retro games have gone through the roof in recent years, as evidenced by a recent slew of record-breaking auction bids for classic titles, including the sale of a mint copy of Super Mario 64 for $1.5m (£1.1m). The supply of old games is limited, and demand is increasing: not just from older people who want to collect games they remember from their youth, but also from those who weren’t even born when the Sega Mega Drive was cutting-edge. “New generations want to go back and experience the classics and own them,” says Fairhurst. “There are game collectors born every day.” Continue reading...
Online retailer will also raise its average starting wage to $18 an hour to help recruit 125,000 peopleAmazon is offering sign-on bonuses of up to $3,000 (£2,165) in some locations as it aims to hire 125,000 delivery and warehouse workers across the US amid a recruitment frenzy.The online retail and tech giant said it was also raising its average starting wage to $18 an hour, up from $17 an hour announced in May, amid fierce competition for hourly paid workers in the US. Continue reading...
by Kalyeena Makortoff Banking correspondent on (#5PGR2)
Taxpayer-backed Future Fund was pitched by Rishi Sunak as support for startups during Covid pandemicThe UK government has become a shareholder in more than 150 companies during the Covid crisis, including a kombucha drinks maker, a bespoke ship builder and a knitting and crochet supplier, data reveals.It is the first time that the government’s development bank has revealed the list of firms that received special taxpayer-backed convertible loans that were earmarked for startups. Continue reading...
XCheck system ‘whitelists’ well-known users who are given special treatment, says Wall Street Journal reportFacebook gives high-profile users special treatment, which includes immunity from its rules for some, and allowed Brazilian footballer Neymar to post nude pictures of a woman who had accused him of rape, according to a report.The XCheck or “CrossCheck” system steers reviews of posts by well-known users such as celebrities, politicians and journalists into a separate system, according to an investigation by the Wall Street Journal. Under the programme, some users are “whitelisted” – not subject to enforcement action – while others are allowed to post material that violates Facebook rules, pending content reviews that often do not take place. Continue reading...
The Nikon Small World photomicrography competition began in 1975 as a means to recognise and applaud the efforts of those involved with photography through the light microscope. Since then, Small World has become a leading showcase for photomicrographers from the widest array of scientific disciplines Continue reading...
China’s regulators targeting payments app as part of tech crackdown, say reportsShares in the Chinese technology company Alibaba have fallen sharply after reports said regulators wanted to break up Alipay, the payments app with more than 1 billion users owned by Jack Ma’s Ant Group.Beijing is seeking to create a separate app for the company’s highly profitable loans businesses, in the latest crackdown on China’s technology sector by the state’s authorities. Continue reading...
The iPhone maker may be set to break market records, but it’s starting to look more and more like a one-gadget ponyIf Apple is to become the world’s first three-trillion-dollar company, the iPhone will play a key role in that feat. The tech firm unveils the latest iteration of its signature product on Tuesday, and the success of the iPhone 13 will determine how quickly Apple goes from its current market capitalisation of just under $2.5tn (£1.8tn) to $3tn.“We believe Apple is on a trajectory to hit $3tn by early 2022 and the iPhone 13 will be a linchpin of growth,” says Dan Ives of investment firm Wedbush Securities. Continue reading...
As students gradually return to campus, many universities will be offering blended learning – mixing face-to-face lectures with the best of digital teaching
Documents show company dragged feet to correct disparity after learning it was failing to comply with laws in UK, Europe and AsiaGoogle has been illegally underpaying thousands of temporary workers in dozens of countries and delayed correcting the pay rates for more than two years as it attempted to cover up the problem, the Guardian can reveal.Google executives have been aware since at least May 2019 that the company was failing to comply with local laws in the UK, Europe and Asia that mandate temporary workers be paid equal rates to full-time employees performing similar work, internal Google documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian show. Continue reading...
My stepfather, Bryan Skipp, who has died aged 92, was a mining and civil engineer who led a colourful life. Although a communist and long-time member of CND, he worked on many sensitive international nuclear power projects. He was also an expert in soil science, an academic and a bon vivant.Born in Bolton, Lancashire, to Sydney Skipp, a pattern maker, and his wife, Hilda, Bryan attended Bolton boys’ school. His parents, both Methodists, wanted him to go into the ministry but he soon declared himself an atheist. Continue reading...
Epic Games withdraws software from app stores and will fully shut it down in OctoberHouseparty, a video chat app that surged in popularity when lockdowns were first imposed last year, is to close down.The platform allows people to virtually drop in to video chatrooms with friends and experienced a spike in demand during the first wave of Covid restrictions, reporting 50m sign-ups in one month. Houseparty is owned by the same company that makes Fortnite and it was integrated into the smash-hit game last year, allowing users to hold video chats while playing. Continue reading...
Ministers considering bringing punishment in line with GDPR, which can issue fine of up to £17.5mMultimillion-pound fines could be imposed for nuisance or fraudulent calls and texts under a proposed overhaul of the UK’s data rules.Companies behind nuisance communications can be fined £500,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) but ministers are considering bringing the punishment in line with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which can issue a fine of up to £17.5m or 4% of global turnover. Continue reading...
Company is latest big US firm to offer education-focused perks to workers after Walmart, Target and KrogerAmazon has offered to pay the cost of college tuition fees for 750,000 of its frontline workers, the latest move by a major US company to offer perks to attract and retain staff amid a labour shortage.The company, which is investing $1.2bn (£0.86bn) in the scheme by 2025, said it would cover the cost of college tuition fees and textbooks for US hourly staff after 90 days of employment for as long as they remain at Amazon. Continue reading...
The 2010s birthed games that changed the world, from Grand Theft Auto V to Pokémon Go. In a decade with so many exceptional games to pick from, which will win out?(Niantic, 2016) Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5P7Y5)
Third-gen folding-screen Android irons out kinks with water resistance, faster performance and lower priceThe flip phone continues its march back towards the mainstream thanks to Samsung’s folding-screen technology. Now cheaper, smoother, water resistant and more durable than last year’s model, it may leave you questioning why you would buy a standard phone at the same price.The Galaxy Z Flip 3 replaces the original Z Flip (there was no version two) and costs £949 ($999/A$1,499) – £350 cheaper than its predecessor and on a par with the top smartphones, including Samsung’s £949 Galaxy S21+. Continue reading...
TikTok, Twitter and Facebook among companies bringing in new measures worldwide that protect childrenTikTok has turned off notifications for children past bedtime, Instagram has disabled targeted adverts for under-18s entirely and YouTube has turned off autoplay for teen users: moves seemingly triggered by Britain introducing a new set of regulations aimed at protecting children online.On Thursday the UK introduced a new set of regulations aimed at protecting children and at a stroke became a global leader in the field, with the prospect of multimillion-dollar fines for companies that breach its new “age appropriate design code” leading to a cascade of last-minute changes across some of Silicon Valley’s largest players. Continue reading...
The pandemic prompted a surge in the use of workplace surveillance programs – and they’re not going away any time soonDavid, 23, admits that he felt a twinge of relief when the first wave of Covid-19 shut down his Arlington, Virginia, office. A recent college graduate, he was new to the job and struggled to click with his teammates. Maybe, he thought, this would be a nice break from “the face-to-face stuff”: the office politics and small talk. (His name has been changed for this story.)“I couldn’t have been more wrong,” David says. Continue reading...
Is that little flickery square in the corner of the screen the real me?Something has become clear. I need to face up to my face. I’ve taken precisely two selfies in my life, and have long shunned mirrors. My face is a thing that I wear on my head, for protection of health and projection of emotion, but for many years I’ve learned not to think too much about it for fear of drowning. The world’s self-image has been dramatically knocked by technology, by filters and apps that allow portraits to be edited smooth and slippery but, while I don’t want to boast, my personal shame was already fully bedded in long before I got a phone. For many years I was upset at not being pretty, feeling alternately cheated and sad, but over time I came to terms with it, deciding to avoid mirrors, photos, and to store that prickly energy elsewhere. I look in the mirror once a day, to draw on eyeliner, which establishes a boundary and also nods to heroines, and to paint over blemishes, sometimes highlighting them by accident, but by that point the game is already up.I look in the mirror once a day, to draw on eyeliner, which establishes a boundary and also nods to heroines Continue reading...
The site in Boca Chica, south Texas is surrounded by protected lands that host a huge range of local wildlife including turtles and hundreds of bird speciesEverything seemed normal as SpaceX’s Starship juddered into the sky over south Texas last March, tangerine flames and white smoke pluming behind it. But roughly six minutes into the test flight, the spacecraft thudded back to Earth.SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk in 2002, has a “test, fly, fail, fix, repeat” method for its commercial space program. That approach is part of why Musk wanted to put the launch site on a tract of land just off the Gulf of Mexico, close to the Texas border with Mexico. “We’ve got a lot of land with nobody around, so if it blows up, it’s cool,” Musk reportedly said at a press conference in 2018. Continue reading...
While the west is unlikely to follow the three-hour gaming limit for children, developers would be unwise to dismiss it too quicklyBeing a parent can feel, at times, like leading an authoritarian nation of one. You control what your subject can read, who they can speak to and what they can do; you deal with periodic revolts against your rule and occasionally engage in a simulacrum of democratic decision-making while knowing that you control the outcome.But for all that authoritarian leaders like to present themselves as a parental figure for the country at large, it’s rare that they actually get involved with the day-to-day work of, well, parenting. Which is why the news that China is taking on the job of limiting gaming time caught the attention of so many parents I know. Continue reading...
How much do these two generations understand about the lives of the other? We listened in on five family discussions to find outBob Smith sits upright on the sofa as his grandson, Louis Brow, prepares to quiz him on youth slang. We are sitting in the living room of Louis’s family home in Ilkley, West Yorkshire; Bob has travelled over from Walton-le-Dale, Lancashire, in his Nissan Micra. Continue reading...
Company says it will ‘collect input and make improvements’ after backlash from privacy groupsApple will delay its plans to begin scanning user images for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) before uploading them to the cloud, the company says, after a backlash from privacy groups.The company’s proposal, first revealed in August, involved a new technique it had developed called “perceptual hashing” to compare photos with known images of child abuse when users opted to upload them to the cloud. If the company detected enough matches, it would manually review the images, before flagging the user account to law enforcement. Continue reading...
Group of workers launched campaign to gather and share experiences of inequity, intimidation and abuse at companyA group of Apple workers is organizing to fight against what it says are patterns of discrimination, racism and sexism within the company and management’s failure to address them, in a rare public display of dissent within the notoriously secretive company.Last week, a group of employees launched #AppleToo, a campaign to gather and share current and past employees’ experiences of inequity, intimidation and abuse. The group hopes to mobilize workers at a time when workers across the tech industry are calling for greater accountability from their employers, and to push Apple to more effectively address such complaints. Continue reading...
They can go on research missions in stormy weather, dive to 150 metres and could soon be ‘singing’ signals. These penguin-like devices are helping to explain the eddies that are key to all lifeIf it looks like a penguin and swims like a penguin – but it’s actually a robot – then it must be the latest advance in marine sensory equipment.The Quadroin is an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV): a 3D-printed self-propelled machine designed to mimic a penguin in order to measure the properties of oceanic eddies. Continue reading...
It is time to evaluate how much transformational control we give billionaires over our societies, and our livesA few weeks ago, Elon Musk announced that his company, Tesla, plans to have a humanoid robot prototype ready next year. The intention is to create a 56kg machine that isn’t “super expensive” to retail. Oh, yes: the commercial application of the planned robot is absolutely to replace human jobs – the ones that Musk himself finds “boring”. Like ones working in factories, and supermarkets.Some argued the announcement was a troll. It wasn’t just that Musk’s speech was preceded by a dancer grooving to dubstep in costume as the robot, or that robotics companies with more skin in the long game than Tesla say the technology is nowhere near what Musk’s proposing. It’s that this convenient moment of dance theatre occurred amid a US federal investigation into Tesla self-driving cars after a series of collisions with parked emergency vehicles. Continue reading...
A survey has found only a fraction of 16- to 24-year-olds think phone calls are remotely important - so they’ve put their phones on vibrateName: Generation mute.Age: 16-24. Continue reading...
by Vincent Ni, China affairs correspondent on (#5NY9D)
Under-18s will be allowed to play online games for one hour on Fridays, weekends and holidaysChina has ordered its online gaming companies to further reduce the services they provide to young gamers, in a move intended to curb what the authorities described as “youth video game addiction”.Under the new rule, young gamers are only allowed to spend an hour playing online games on Fridays, weekends and holidays, according to the official Xinhua news agency. Continue reading...
Technology could help power a clean energy transition if it can overcome hurdles of cost, design and opposition from fishingIn the stormy waters of the North Sea, 15 miles off the coast of Aberdeenshire, in Scotland, five floating offshore wind turbines stretch 574 feet (175 metres) above the water. The world’s first floating windfarm, a 30 megawatt facility run by the Norwegian company Equinor, has only been in operation since 2017 but has already broken UK records for energy output.While most offshore wind turbines are anchored to the ocean floor on fixed foundations, limiting them to depths of about 165ft, floating turbines are tethered to the seabed by mooring lines. These enormous structures are assembled on land and pulled out to sea by boats. Continue reading...
• Elizabeth Holmes plans to accuse Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani• Blood-testing startup allegedly misled investors and patientsThe disgraced founder of the blood-testing startup Theranos plans to blame emotional and sexual abuse by her former boyfriend, also a senior executive at the company, at her federal fraud trial beginning next week, according to legal papers published on Saturday.Related: 'Americans have a fascination with fraudsters': Alex Gibney on the fall of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes Continue reading...
Japan’s Aramitsu Kitazono was left with cuts and bruises after being hit by the e-Palette vehicle at the athletes’ villageToyota has apologised for the “overconfidence” of a self-driving bus after it ran over a Paralympic judoka in the athletes’ village and said it would temporarily suspend the service.The Japanese athlete, Aramitsu Kitazono, will be unable to compete in his 81kg category this weekend after being left with cuts and bruises following the impact with the “e-Palette” vehicle. His injuries prompted a personal intervention from the president of Toyota, Akio Toyoda. Continue reading...
No apps can summon couriers in minutes, readers and riders tell of more unusual pandemic ordersMost online deliveries do not come with a health warning from the delivery driver but David Smith received one from a relieved courier who, on handing over Smith’s buzzing box, suggested the bees inside were “a bit angry”.Rather than new clothes or groceries the 60-year-old Smith had turned to the web to buy a bumblebee colony and “villa” to house them. “I decided that my garden needed bees and the bees needed a home,” he says. “They have given me a summer of pleasure and I’ll do it again next year.” Continue reading...
Benyamin Ahmed’s Weird Whales sell in cryptocurrency and ownership is stored on blockchainA 12-year-old boy had made about £290,000 after creating digital pictures of whales and selling tokens of their ownership which are stored on blockchain.Benyamin Ahmed’s collection of pixelated artworks called Weird Whales went viral during the school holidays. His success may be a harbinger of the digital business models that could disrupt the banking sector. Continue reading...
Investigation into US tech firm’s proposed acquisition of British chip designer expectedThe US multinational technology company Nvidia has said it will answer “any concerns” raised by the European Commission as regulators appeared set to launch an investigation into the firm’s proposed $54bn (£39bn) purchase of the British chip designer Arm.The world’s leading maker of graphics and artificial intelligence chips is expected to notify the commission early in September of its plan to purchase Arm, when regulators would probably undertake a preliminary review. Continue reading...
As OnlyFans ended the peen panic, Twitter was united by petty grievances. Think of the level of civilisation we have reachedThanks to the continued commitment of 2021 seemingly to give me simultaneous infarctions in every organ, the week opened with the news that Ian “Beefy” Botham is to become the new trade envoy for Australia and John Cleese is to host a new series looking at “wokeness” and “cancel culture”. Continue reading...
Uber, Lyft and other companies fighting Massachusetts lawsuit that would grant workers status as employeesFelipe Martinez began working full-time as an Uber driver in the Boston, Massachusetts, area in late 2017. He enjoyed the flexibility, being able to work nights while spending days with his children and focusing on his family, but then Uber began unilaterally implementing changes that he says progressively worsened over time.“You start thinking they’re just glitches on the app,” said Martinez, 51, who cited changes such as not being given the rides closest to you, and the removal of unlimited destination filters – which give drivers more ability to set their routes. “Little by little, they started changing the unlimited destination filters and saying that people were abusing them.” Continue reading...
First chickens, and now a worldwide shortage of microprocessors … the word ‘chip’ is the latest word to gain an Armageddon flavourAs if there weren’t enough disasters happening simultaneously, people are now speaking of the present “chipageddon”: the worldwide shortage of microprocessors that is affecting supplies of everything from toasters and games consoles to cars.A silicon “chip” was thus christened in the early 1960s simply because it is a small flat piece of material, like a chip of wood or stone – or, of course, potato – separated by a cutting action (the verb “chop” is related). In a modern chip factory, a small circular wafer of silicon is divided into many chips, each one holding billions of transistors, which is an improvement on the few thousand possible in the early 70s. The ever-flexible “-mageddon” suffix, meanwhile – as in snowmageddon or carmageddon – ultimately takes its form from the Hebrew place name Megiddo in the Book of Revelation’s account of the end of days. Continue reading...
Preliminary lawsuit settlement allows developers to circumvent the tech giant’s lucrative commission systemIndependent developers will be allowed to tell iPhone users about ways of avoiding the “Apple Tax” on their apps for the first time, as part of an out-of-court settlement concluding a class-action lawsuit against the company.The agreement, which is accompanied by a $100m payout from Apple to be distributed among App Store developers who have earned less than $1m over the past six years, represents a small but significant concession from the company, whose iron grip over the App Store has earned it billions in profit alongside accusations of unlawful monopolistic behaviour. Continue reading...
The acclaimed Dropout podcast returns to chronicle legal proceedings against the Theranos founder. Plus: good cops go bad in a new series with shades of The WireThe Dropout (available from 31 August)
The government says an overhaul will boost growth and increase trade – but it must be careful not to go too farThe government has announced plans to reshape the UK’s data laws such as GDPR requirements in an effort, it claims, to boost growth and increase trade post-Brexit. The digital, media and culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, says the UK wants to shape data laws based on “common sense, not box-ticking”. Continue reading...
Culture secretary says move could lead to an end to irritating cookie popups and consent requests onlineBritain will attempt to move away from European data protection regulations as it overhauls its privacy rules after Brexit, the government has announced.The freedom to chart its own course could lead to an end to irritating cookie popups and consent requests online, said the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, as he called for rules based on “common sense, not box-ticking”. Continue reading...
App Store gave 14-year-old’s account access to apps rated ‘17+’ even though it knew user’s self-declared ageApple knowingly lets underage users access apps intended for adults, according to an investigation by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), despite having asked for and recorded their dates of birth.The investigation asserts a disconnect between the information Apple knows about a user, which includes their self-declared age, and the ways it polices age restrictions on its App Store. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian