The Star Wars actor expanded on his defiance of racist social media users in an Instagram Live video
John Boyega has been praised for a series of uncompromising social media posts speaking out about racism in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.
Boyega’s initial Tweet, “I really fucking hate racists”, currently has 1.3m likes, but came in for criticism for his hard-hitting tone and use of an expletive.
Continue reading...The first crewed flight from US soil since 2011 was called off 16 minutes before lift off; the next opportunity is on Saturday
The United States’ long-anticipated return to human spaceflight will have to wait a few more days after poor weather forced mission managers to scrub Wednesday’s planned launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida.
The first crewed flight from US soil since 2011 was called off 16min 53sec before the scheduled 4.33pm lift-off time, with SpaceX and Nasa officials blaming “strength of electric fields in the atmosphere”, translating to lightning near the launchpad.
Continue reading...Donald Trump has threatened to “strongly regulate” or close down social media platforms that do not meet his standards for ideological balance, a day after Twitter, for the first time, slapped a warning label on a pair of Trump tweets spreading lies about mail-in voting.
Related: George Floyd killing: sister says police officers should be charged with murder
Continue reading...Video platform blames deletion of criticisms on an error in its automated systems
YouTube is investigating the apparently automatic removal of comments critical of the Chinese Communist party amid complaints of censorship.
The company said the filtering appeared to be “an error” amid a greater reliance on automated systems during the coronavirus pandemic because its human reviewers have been sent home.
Continue reading...President rails against decision after his tweets on mail-in voting are marked with message: ‘Get the facts’
Twitter for the first time took action against a series of tweets by Donald Trump, labeling them with a warning sign and providing a link to further information.
Since ascending to the US presidency, Trump has used his Twitter account to threaten a world leader with war, amplify racist misinformation by British hate figures and, as recently as Tuesday morning, spread a lie about the 2001 death of a congressional aide in order to smear a cable news pundit. Throughout it all, Twitter has remained steadfast in its refusal to censor the head of state, even going so far as to write a new policy to allow itself to leave up tweets by “world leaders” that violate its rules.
Continue reading...Newly discovered vulnerability allows users to bypass limitations built in by Apple
A newly discovered vulnerability in iPhones allows users to bypass Apple’s built-in limitations – known as “jailbreaking” – for the first time in four years.
The release of a functional jailbreak for iOS 13.5, the latest version of the iPhone operating system, represents a breakthrough for the small community of users who rely on jailbreaks for everything from serious security research to simply running games and software that Apple does not allow on iPhones.
Continue reading...Elon Musk’s SpaceX, in partnership with Nasa, to launch Falcon 9 rocket from Florida carrying two American astronauts
In a historic moment a decade in the making, the skies above Florida will light up on Wednesday when the launch of a rocket born from a groundbreaking public-private partnership returns the United States to the business of human spaceflight.
Not since the retirement of Nasa’s space shuttle fleet in 2011 has the US possessed the capability to send its own astronauts into orbit, and the success of this week’s mission, formally known as SpaceX Demo-2, is likely to shape the direction of the space agency’s near-Earth ambitions for a generation.
Continue reading...Falcon 9 rocket to make history as billionaire seeks to commercialise space travel
Elon Musk’s SpaceX company hopes to make history on Wednesday by launching the first astronauts into space from US soil in nine years, as the billionaire takes the next step in his dream to commercialise space travel.
Donald Trump will be among the spectators at Kennedy space centre in Florida to witness the launch, which has been given the green light despite the coronavirus lockdown.
Continue reading...Streaming service must convince podcast listeners to switch from their favourite app
Joe Rogan, the comedian, MMA commentator and podcaster, may seem an unlikely prospect for becoming the world’s highest paid broadcaster. But after signing an exclusive deal with Spotify, that is what he may have become, marking a new era for podcasting in the process.
To much of the world, Rogan’s name is most associated with the periodic furores that erupt from the marathon interviews around which his podcast is structured.
Continue reading...Data breach included names, home addresses and national identification numbers
Indonesia is investigating how 2.3 million voters’ personal information was leaked online, the election commission said.
The data breach, which included names, home addresses and national identification numbers, appeared to be from the 2014 election voter list, the General Election Commission revealed on Friday.
Continue reading...Thomas le Bonniec says firm violating rights and continues massive collection of data
A former Apple contractor who helped blow the whistle on the company’s programme to listen to users’ Siri recordings has decided to go public, in protest at the lack of action taken as a result of the disclosures.
In a letter announcing his decision, sent to all European data protection regulators, Thomas le Bonniec said: “It is worrying that Apple (and undoubtedly not just Apple) keeps ignoring and violating fundamental rights and continues their massive collection of data.
Continue reading...The pandemic has forced the Unicode Consortium to delay new emojis in 2021 – but remixes of existing ones could be on their way
Covid-19 has taken so much from us, but now it’s come for our emojis too.
Related: Coronavirus US live: Trump claims to take hydroxychloroquine and threatens to withdraw US from WHO
Continue reading...Airline apologises after credit card details of about 2,200 passengers were stolen
EasyJet has revealed that the personal information of 9 million customers was accessed in a “highly sophisticated” cyber-attack on the airline.
The company said on Tuesday that email addresses and travel details were accessed and it would contact the customers affected.
Continue reading...Twitter CEO’s $10m pledge will immediately help ‘put a device in the hand of every single kid’ in Oakland’s public schools
Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and Square, has announced that he will donate $10m toward computers and internet access for public schools in Oakland, a city where half of students lack reliable access to either.
Dorsey dropped the news after the Oakland mayor, Libby Schaaf, tweeted a video of one those 25,000 students without access to the technology. “Every student deserves the ability to learn from home,” wrote Schaaf.
Continue reading...In Mosul, sourcing essential medication can be an expensive struggle – but entrepreneur Ameen Hadeed may have found the solution
When Ameen Hadeed’s father had heart surgery in 2015, the tricky part was not the operation but finding the drugs to aid his recovery.
The clinic had no medicine, so Hadeed was told to hustle around his home city Mosul to find the prescriptions. It took hours and cost a small fortune, as he visited store after store.
Continue reading...CEO announces electric carmaker will begin production on Monday after company sues county over Covid-19 restrictions
Elon Musk announced on Twitter that Tesla would resume production at its northern California factory on Monday afternoon, in defiance of a local public health order designed to slow the spread of coronavirus.
“Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules,” the billionaire CEO tweeted. “I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.”
Continue reading...If the UK government wants to start easing the country's lockdown restrictions, it needs to get contact tracing right. But what does that mean? What would successful contact tracing even look like? Josh Toussaint-Strauss tries to find out with a little help from Christophe Fraser, an Oxford professor and infectious disease epidemiologist, and Alex Hern, the Guardian's UK technology editor
The app will ask for your name (or pseudonym), age range, postcode and phone number. Scott Morrison says the Australian government’s covid safe tracking app won’t be mandatory to download and install, but its uptake numbers could play a part in easing Covid-19 restrictions
The Australian government has launched Covidsafe, an app that traces every person running the app who has been in contact with someone else using the app who has tested positive for coronavirus in the previous few weeks, in a bid to automate coronavirus contact tracing, and allow the easing of restrictions.
Here’s what we know about the app so far.
Continue reading...Researchers link exposure to mining pollutants to greatly increased risk of conditions such as spina bifida and limb abnormalities
Thousands of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are being exposed to dangerous levels of toxic pollution that is causing birth defects in their children as they mine for cobalt used to make rechargeable batteries for smartphones, laptops and electric cars, a new medical study has found.
Research published in the Lancet last week found that local people working in mines in the African “copperbelt”, a mining region stretching across Zambia and the DRC, are at significantly higher risk of having children born with serious birth defects.
Continue reading...Fake social media accounts also used to support Ron Paul’s presidential bid and the Occupy movement
Iran’s state broadcaster experimented with using fake social media accounts to influence the outcome of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and other western elections, according to a report from Facebook released on Tuesday.
The Iranian network, one of eight to be suspended for so-called “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” by the social media giant in April, points to efforts by state-linked groups to try to use Facebook to influence foreign democratic contests years before Russia’s alleged campaign against the 2016 US presidential contest.
Continue reading...