Action comes as officials increasingly voice concern that Russia may be using cryptocurrency to avoid the impact of sanctionsJoe Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order on government oversight of cryptocurrency that urges the Federal Reserve to explore whether the central bank should jump in and create its own digital currency.The Biden administration views the explosive popularity of cryptocurrency as an opportunity to examine the risks and benefits of digital assets, said a senior administration official who previewed the order Tuesday on the condition of anonymity, terms set by the White House. Continue reading...
A new documentary chronicles the adventures of the Grannies, a group of friends who went looking for the glitchy event horizon of Rockstar’s virtual-western epicThe story of online cowboy posse the Grannies starts, as video games so often do, in a character creation menu. Having played through the single-player story of Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption 2, Kalonica Quigley and Marigold Bartlett, Melbourne-based friends and game developers, decided to try the online multiplayer portion of the game. On separate PlayStation 4s, and without one another’s knowledge, they each created elderly women as their avatars. It was an opportunity, laughs Bartlett over a Discord call, to cosplay as themselves in the future.Not long after, friends and fellow game-makers Ian MacLarty and Andy Brophy, rendered as elderly men, joined them. The group hung out in Rockstar’s staggering, almost photorealistic depiction of the US on the brink of the 20th century, taking photos and making their own silly fun beyond the game’s murderous objectives. Then they started seeking out glitches, faults or weirdnesses in its code. Continue reading...
Musk lawyers accused US regulators of ‘micro-management’ but experts call the move an ‘exercise in legal silliness’Elon Musk has asked a federal judge to terminate his 2018 agreement with the top US securities regulator requiring some of his tweets to be vetted by a lawyer.Musk also asked the judge to block a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) subpoena requesting records of pre-approval of a Twitter poll he conducted in November on potentially selling some of his stock. Continue reading...
John Barksdale faces up to 65 in prison in connection with Ormeus Coin as well as facing civil charges alongside JonAtina BarksdaleUS authorities on Tuesday filed criminal charges against a cryptocurrency executive and civil charges against him and his sister, accusing them of defrauding retail investors out of millions of dollars with a digital token known as Ormeus Coin.In papers filed in Manhattan federal court, the justice department said John Barksdale lied about the value and profitability of Ormeus Coin’s mining assets, including that the coin was backed by a $250m mining operation generating more than $5m of monthly revenue. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5WWXW)
Cheapest iPhone gets 5G plus updated iPad Air and new power computer aimed at creative prosApple has announced a new version of its cheapest iPhone, an updated iPad Air tablet and a new powerful professional desktop computer called the Mac Studio.During a livestreamed event on Tuesday, Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook also announced that the firm would begin showing Friday night Major League Baseball games on its Apple TV+ service in the US, UK, Australia and other markets. Continue reading...
Too many of us found ourselves hotly arguing about a pointless question last week. Why can’t we help wasting time on inconsequential online queries such as what colour is The Dress or how dogs would wear trousers?The internet is no place for reasonable discussion. This is a lesson that was recently learned in the most painful way by Auckland resident Ryan Nixon, who last weekend made the innocent mistake of asking Twitter whether there were more doors or wheels in the world.A whopping 223,347 people replied and filled out his poll, with 53.6% of them guessing there were more wheels in the world. One guy worked out a complex formula on a piece of paper. Others argued that a wheel can be a door but a door cannot be a wheel. One particularly deep thinker pointed out that, while wheels are a human invention, doors “are primal – even celestial – in nature”. The debate, which will never be definitively resolved, continues. Sorry for putting it into your brain. Continue reading...
The Russian artist – who spent two years in a Siberian jail for singing an anti-Putin ‘punk prayer’ – is using NFTs to fight the dictator, raising $7m in five days. At a time like this, she says, only activism will keep you saneNadya Tolokonnikova is in a geographically undisclosed location, speaking to me on Zoom, in a Pussy Riot T-shirt, looking purposeful, driven and singleminded. Her feminist protest art has been deadly serious since its inception, when she founded Pussy Riot in 2011. The watching world may have been entertained by its playful notes, the guerrilla gigs in unauthorised places, culminating in the event for which she was prosecuted, in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, when she sang Punk Prayer: Mother of God, Drive Putin Away.But the consequences have always been seismic and severe. Tolokonnikova, along with two other members of Pussy Riot, were sentenced to two years in prison for hooliganism in 2012, separated from their very young children, went on hunger strike, endured unimaginably harsh conditions and were named prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International. Continue reading...
The Russians are unexpectedly losing the battle on social media. But defeating Putin on the ground is another matterSo is the conflict in Ukraine – as some of the world’s media seem to think, the “TikTok war” – or, more generically, “the first social media war”? As Russian tanks rolled into the country, videos of frightened people huddling together, explosions blasting through urban streets and missiles streaking across Ukrainian skies suddenly replaced TikTok’s usual fare of memes, jokes, fitness and dance videos. “Ukrainian social media influencers,” reported Reuters, “uploaded bleak scenes of themselves wrapped in blankets in underground bunkers and army tanks rolling down residential streets, juxtaposed against photos of blooming flowers and laughing friends at restaurants that honoured more peaceful memories of their home towns. They urged their followers to pray for Ukraine, donate to support the Ukrainian military and demanded Russian users in particular to join anti-war efforts.” TikTok users across the country began livestreaming the war and the buildup of Russian forces, denying Vlad the Invader the ability to dominate the narrative about what was happening.All of which is impressive. It was a light (sometimes the only light last week) shining in the darkness. What we were seeing, wrote Chris Stokel-Walker on Vice, was the “meme-ification of the Ukraine invasion”. In a networked world, this is supposedly a big deal because memes can be used to dominate the information space – now believed to be an important element of any conflict. The strange thing is that, up to now, we thought that the Russians were the Olympic champions of this stuff. Continue reading...
It’s the most popular messaging service in Ukraine, and used by protesters of all kinds. Now it must find a way to make moneyIn the days after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of his country, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, used his Telegram channel to send a defiant video message from the centre of the capital, Kyiv, calling on the nation to unite and resist the Russian attack.The WhatsApp-like messaging service, co-founded by exiled Russian billionaire brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, has become a key weapon in a digital propaganda battle that will ultimately boost its usage and investor profile ahead of a possible $50bn stock market flotation next year. Continue reading...
The British photojournalist on following the Kuch migration in the mountains in IranIt wasn’t navigating rocky paths, herding hundreds of animals or the prospect of spending 14 nights in a tent that Emily Garthwaite was thinking about on her first day on the Zagros mountain range. It was where she fitted within Hossein and Jahan’s family.The British-born photojournalist, who has lived in northern Iraq since 2019, was joining the husband and wife, three of their nine children, other relatives, plus donkeys, dogs, sheep, goats and horses, for their biannual Kuch (migration). The nomad family of the Bakhtiari tribe were moving to warmer pastures for the winter months of 2020, a 250km walk. Continue reading...
Social media platform is a popular news source for young adults, but misinformation is commonplace• Russia-Ukraine war: live newsTrucks carrying large cylindrical containers sweep down a snowy road to a soundtrack of hollering and an alarming, if amateurish, caption: “RUSIA NUCLEAR BOMB”. The video was taken down, but not before it received 18m views. Welcome to the Russia-Ukraine conflict on TikTok.TikTok has 1 billion users worldwide and is an important news source for adults and particularly those under 25. A quarter of US adults say they always use TikTok to get the news, with nearly half of US millennial and Gen Z adults – under-41s and under-25s respectively – indicating the same, according to analysis firm Forrester Research. Continue reading...
In the new series Super Pumped, Joseph Gordon-Levitt brings ‘ruthless’ Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick to life along with his extreme career highs and lowsIn dark jacket, grey sweater and white undershirt, Travis Kalanick was relaxed in comfy chair, coffee mug before him, shooting the breeze with late-night TV host Stephen Colbert. Then came a cry from the studio audience.“Shame! Respect drivers’ labour! Respect professional full-time work!” The camera picked out a T-shirt-wearing protester who, standing and cupping his hands to his mouth, yelled: “Uber exploits taxi drivers for profit and kills professional full-time work in the taxi industry!” Continue reading...
Trading platform boss says "‘crypto is too small for Russia’ and more focus should be placed on the banking systemThe founder of Binance, the cryptocurrency trading platform, has dismissed fears that virtual money could be used by the Kremlin to evade sanctions as he claimed that “crypto is too small for Russia”.Changpeng Zhao said cryptocurrencies also defeated attempts to work around sanctions by being too traceable, adding that more focus should be placed on banks. In a statement Zhao said the media and politicians should be focusing on conventional lenders and the oil and gas market. Continue reading...
by Alexi Duggins, Hannah Verdier and Hollie Richardso on (#5WR3X)
The psychological illusionist has a new series that could help ease people’s anxieties. Plus, what really happened when plane passengers were taken hostage by Saddam HusseinDerren Brown’s Bootcamp for Life
The British Academy’s game awards will reward titles with a social message as well as the year’s best acting performancesInnovative science-fiction shooter Returnal and creative co-operative platform game It Takes Two lead the nominations for Bafta’s 2022 Games Awards, with eight nominations each in categories from best animation to best game.Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, a flagship PlayStation 5 game from last summer, is in the running for seven awards, while driving-tourism racer Forza Horizon 5 and surreal psychological adventure Psychonauts 2 have six nominations each. In total, 39 games have been nominated across the awards’ 16 categories, celebrating excellence in everything from sound design and animation to narrative. Continue reading...
In an attempt to lure more viewers to the increasingly unwatched Oscars ceremony, a hashtag award has been introduced and quickly transformed into a circusUnless you happen to have a vested interest in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, it’s plain to see that the Oscars are trapped in a death spiral. Viewers are abandoning the ceremony in record numbers and, after last year’s debacle – a bizarre jokeless gushfest held in a train station – it’s hard to see how they will ever return.Fortunately, the Academy braintrust has schemed up two dramatic changes to this year’s ceremony that should help to bring things back into line. The first is that a bunch of awards won’t actually be televised live but edited into the broadcast, which will help to make the show’s runtime far less punishing. The second change, though, has already backfired. Continue reading...
In HBO series Gaming Wall Street, director Tobias Deml tries to get to the bottom of how Redditors turned a video game retailer into a financial frenzy“Money in, money out,” is how Tobias Deml, creator of the new HBO Max documentary miniseries Gaming Wall Street, explains the common perception of the stock market while on Zoom with the Guardian. “It’s got to come from somewhere, right? But it’s all based on belief in the future. Money’s all belief. We believe in the government, borders, lots of things that aren’t materially real, but nonetheless exist in our shared imagination. The history of humanity is driven by these beliefs.”Stocks are fake, is what he’s saying, as in not real – “fairy dust”, to borrow a term from Matthew McConaughey’s coke-huffing trader in The Wolf of Wall Street, one of the many pop culture figures that zips by in the rapid-fire torrent of memes frenetically edited into Gaming Wall St. Shares of a company are an intangible concept that nonetheless have physical, real-world consequences in their regular minting of princes and paupers. This alchemy has long been the sole purview of high-finance types, professionals who’d have us believe that their business school educations and sophisticated Bloomberg Terminals make them masters of financial systems too hopelessly complex for us knuckle-draggers to comprehend. But in an era when a degree’s worth of knowledge sits waiting on the internet, it was only a matter of time until some normal folks realized that everyone’s making it up as they go. “Anyone who claims to know everything about how the market works is lying to you,” Deml says. Continue reading...
Crypto’s ability to eschew bureaucratic red tape is the best way to provide immediate service to a vulnerable population, experts sayHe would bristle at the term but you might describe Dylan Schultz as a crypto bro. He runs Lavender.Five, a crypto validator service that authenticates transactions on the blockchain (imagine a deregulated branch of the Securities and Exchange Commission).On 25 February, he issued a plea to his 1,700 Twitter followers, “We’ll match any donation made to a charity in support of Ukraine, up to a total of $1,000.” The next day, Schultz posted the fruits of his initiative; 0.028 bitcoin, equaling the total donations of about $1,100, sent to a crypto wallet operated by a Ukrainian military NGO called Come Back Alive. He’s one tiny part of a chorus of countless other crypto holders all over the world who have raced to back Ukrainians in the face of an invading force. Reports claim that more than $30m in cryptocurrency has been funneled to the country since the war began. So has charity finally become decentralized? Continue reading...
Regulators will consider the techniques the company implements to attract young users and keep them watchingA bipartisan group of attorneys general are launching an investigation into whether TikTok is designed and promoted in a “manner that causes or exacerbates physical and mental health harms” for children and young people.Led by the Massachusetts attorney general, Maura Healy, the regulators are investigating whether the company violated consumer protection laws or put the public at risk. Continue reading...
It is being hailed as one of the greatest games of all time, but if you don’t yet know your Margit from your Elden, here is a guide to get you roaming the Lands Between like a proElden Ring has a Metacritic rating of 97%. If you type its name into Twitter you will be flooded with praise and anecdotes from players who have already spent many hours immersed in its arcane world. But what exactly is it? Why are people obsessed with it? And should you join them – or is it too hard? Continue reading...
Jack Sweeney has amassed 162,000 Twitter followers on a new account monitoring the private jets of billionaires and tycoonsThe teenager known for tracking Elon Musk’s jet has started to monitor the flight paths of Russian oligarchs as their movements come under increasing scrutiny following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.In a new Twitter account created over the weekend, 19-year-old Jack Sweeney from Florida has already amassed nearly 162,000 followers as the teen tracks the private jets of at least 21 Russian billionaires and tycoons. Continue reading...
The tech giant has many ways of gathering information about its users’ activity – from Prime to Alexa. But how much can it collect and what can you do to keep your life private?From selling books out of Jeff Bezos’s garage to a global conglomerate with a yearly revenue topping $400bn (£290bn), much of the monstrous growth of Amazon has been fuelled by its customers’ data. Continuous analysis of customer data determines, among other things, prices, suggested purchases and what profitable own-label products Amazon chooses to produce. The 200 million users who are Amazon Prime members are not only the corporation’s most valuable customers but also their richest source of user data. The more Amazon and services you use – whether it’s the shopping app, the Kindle e-reader, the Ring doorbell, Echo smart speaker or the Prime streaming service – the more their algorithms can infer what kind of person you are and what you are most likely to buy next. The firm’s software is so accomplished at prediction that third parties can hire its algorithms as a service called Amazon Forecast.Not everyone is happy about this level of surveillance. Those who have requested their data from Amazon are astonished by the vast amounts of information they are sent, including audio files from each time they speak to the company’s voice assistant, Alexa. Continue reading...
Services like PayPal and Square now need your tax information. Scammers are going to be on the prowl to get it tooThanks to new legislation that went into place at the beginning of this year, I predict that a lot of unsuspecting small business owners are about to fall victim to a fresh scam.The scam will relate to legislation around new tax reporting rules that will affect millions of freelancers and small businesses. As I explained in an earlier column, beginning for the 2022 tax year, if you receive more than $600 in total payments during the course of the year from a payment service like PayPal, Venmo (which is owned by PayPal), Square, Stripe or online sales of your products made through Amazon, Etsy and other marketplaces – regardless of how many customers are paying – that payment service is required to report that amount to the IRS and to you by sending a Form 1099-K – used for reporting payments via these third parties – in early 2023. Continue reading...
The New York-based photographer on how he glimpsed the collapse of civilisation during Covid – in the window of a pizza placeWhen Aaron Stern considers what inspires his work, he is reminded of the Leonard Cohen lyric, “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” In March 2020, as New York City began to shutter and fall silent, the photographer’s busy schedule cleared. He had nothing to do but walk and shoot. “Seeing 80,000 people empty out of the city I’ve called home for 21 years – it was ominous, and fascinating,” he says. “I was trying to find some humour, some lightness.”In the end, he found it in the window of Arturo’s, a pizza place in Lower Manhattan. “The fake relic brought the collapse of Rome to mind, and the fall of that civilisation and democracy, while the glamorous Joe DiMaggio era that once embodied New York is also long gone,” he says. “Here I am, in this post-truth era, post-Capitol attacks, with this disease that’s killing thousands, and I stumbled across this juxtaposition of two previous eras that have also ended. It captured just what I was thinking about.” Continue reading...
What do you do with an online doppelgänger? Use their streaming logins, cancel their bookings or fight them for naming rightsAs I unsubscribe from the ninth email in three days urging me to “refinance now!” if I don’t want to miss a “special rate!”, I curse my email doppelgänger. She’s landed us on a marketing database again and now I’m being inundated with spam.My email doppelgänger is the person whose emails I receive in error, presumably due to an extra vowel or missing dash. I don’t know if she’s actually a “she”, but I’ve constructed an identity for her from the bits and pieces I think I’ve gleaned: female, teacher, resides in the US. Continue reading...
The news agency has since deleted the tweet promoting the sale and called it ‘poor choice of imagery’The Associated Press has withdrawn plans to sell a video “of migrants drifting in an overcrowded boat in the Mediterranean” as an NFT after facing a backlash online.The news outlet’s Thursday tweet advertising the clip, which came as Russia’s invasion raised fears of widespread displacement of Ukrainians, provoked accusations that the AP was seeking to profit off of suffering. Continue reading...
Kimbal Musk sold Tesla shares the day before his brother asked Twitter if he should sellThe US Securities and Exchange Commission has reportedly opened an investigation into whether recent stock sales by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal Musk violated insider trading rules.The SEC inquiry – first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday – was sparked in part by the Tesla CEO’s own tweets. Continue reading...
In this week’s newsletter: Nintendo closing its Wii and 3DS digital storefronts is a reminder that it’s become so much harder to replay, and introduce the next generation to, our old favourites
Some users report problems registering on Truth Social, launched after Trump was banned from TwitterDonald Trump’s return to social media after being banned from several platforms last year is off to a bumpy start: the former president’s new social media venture, Truth Social, launched on Apple’s App Store on Sunday, rife with errors, malfunctions, and looming questions.Despite being available to download shortly before midnight eastern time and automatically downloaded to Apple devices whose users had pre-ordered it, the app prevented many users from creating an account. Continue reading...
Tim Sanders says socialising with people is more beneficial, while Anne Cowper recommends crosswords for a real challengeA Wordle habit probably wouldn’t protect Emma Brockes from dementia (My five-letter reaction to the New York Times taking over Wordle? I quit, 17 February). There is a myth about puzzles and brain health. The human brain is large because we are social beings. Meeting our fellow creatures is more likely to keep us well. The Lancet’s review, published in 2020, is useful for those interested in what makes a difference – eg exercise, eating well, voting for clean-air policies and embracing education. If your family tells you that your hearing is getting worse, get it checked. Gather with others in whatever way you can. If you like peace, quiet and indeed word puzzles, enjoy them in moderation.
Artificial intelligence has been identified as one of the top three emerging technologies in conservation, helping protect species around the worldThere’s a strand of thinking, from sci-fi films to Stephen Hawking, that suggests artificial intelligence (AI) could spell doom for humans. But conservationists are increasingly turning to AI as an innovative tech solution to tackle the biodiversity crisis and mitigate climate change.A recent report by Wildlabs.net found that AI was one of the top three emerging technologies in conservation. From camera trap and satellite images to audio recordings, the report notes: “AI can learn how to identify which photos out of thousands contain rare species; or pinpoint an animal call out of hours of field recordings – hugely reducing the manual labour required to collect vital conservation data.” Continue reading...
A reader has a poor mobile signal in a rural area and had every excuse in the book for the delayI live in rural Derbyshire and have been trying to get broadband installed since July last year. Since placing the order, I have received every excuse in the book from BT as to why my installation cannot go ahead.My near neighbour has a broadband service, but it appears that there is a problem with the pole in the road and it must be replaced. I took another call yesterday to learn that BT has just delayed installation by a further six weeks to March. That will be almost nine months since I placed the order – if it goes ahead. I have a very poor mobile signal which makes doing any work at home very difficult. Continue reading...
What does it feel like to be ‘12% machine’? An ex-soldier who lost both legs in Afghanistan examines the implications of advances in medical technology with intelligence and humanityIt is now 13 years since Harry Parker stepped on an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan, creating a blast that would result in the loss of both legs. Alongside the physical pain of the subsequent weeks, months and years, he also had to cope with a profound change in his sense of self. He compares the experience to that of Gregor Samsa, the subject of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis – “the strangeness of not being who you used to be, turned into something that sets you apart from those around you”.Equipped with two hi-tech prosthetic limbs, Parker can now walk holding hands with his wife and carry his children on his shoulders. From the outside, it would be easy to conclude that he has adapted extraordinarily well to the event – and he says that “being an amputee feels normal”. But he still considers himself to be a different person – a “new body with a new identity” who is “12% machine”. Continue reading...
Some accounts claiming to support the Canada trucker protests are run by con artists abroadWhen Facebook removed dozens of groups dedicated to Canada’s anti-government “Freedom Convoy” protests earlier this month, it didn’t do so because of extremism or conspiracies rife within the protests. It was because the groups were being run by scam artists.Networks of spammers and profiteers, some based as far afield as Vietnam or Romania, had set up the groups using fake or hacked Facebook accounts in an attempt to make money off of the political turmoil. Continue reading...
by Jasper Jackson, Lucy Kassa and Mark Townsend on (#5WAXC)
Social media giant accused of inaction after users post ‘horrifying and hateful content’Facebook is under renewed scrutiny this weekend, accused of continuing to allow activists to incite ethnic massacres in Ethiopia’s escalating war.Analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and the Observer found Facebook is still letting users post content inciting violence through hate and misinformation. This is despite being aware it helps directly fuel tensions, prompting claims of inaction and indifference against the social media giant. Continue reading...
The Norwegian photographer on capturing his youngest daughter’s lockdown frustrationIt was April 2020, the sixth week of home schooling, and eight-year-old Lara was fed up. Her father, photographer Helge Skodvin, along with his wife and two elder daughters, was stuck inside with Lara at home in Norway. The first wave of Covid had closed schools across the country, so at 9am every day, each of Skodvin’s daughters took a room in the house to join online classes; his youngest was supposed to be in the kitchen. Instead, Skodvin found Lara hiding under her bed, refusing to go back to her screen, table and lesson. He is pretty sure it was maths she ran away from.“I was walking past her bedroom and spotted her legs sticking out. I had my phone in my hand, so I just snapped the scene,” Skodvin says. “I loved the colours, the chaos, the authenticity, and there was beautiful spring light coming in through the window. There was no need for my work camera, or even any edits.” Continue reading...
Gallery at site of uprising against colonial rule accuses US museum of stonewalling request for artefactA statue depicting the angry spirit of a Belgian officer beheaded during an uprising in Congo in 1931 is at the centre of a tug of war between a US museum and a Congolese gallery at the site of the rebellion.The statue of Maximilien Balot, a colonial administrator, has travelled to Europe but the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is accused of stonewalling requests for a loan to the White Cube gallery in Lusanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Continue reading...
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