Category Archives: Technology

How to avoid Amazon: the definitive guide to online shopping – without the retail titan

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Amazon’s sales have hit £8,800 a second, while concerns persist about its tax affairs, treatment of staff and effect on small retailers. Here’s how to buy everything from technology to beauty to books without it

With the shutters down on high streets and retail parks around the world, meaning that home delivery is the only option for almost anything other than food and medicine, it’s no surprise that Amazon is seeing business boom. The online retailer, already a one-stop shop for many people, has seen customers flock through its virtual doors in the weeks since coronavirus hit.

The site is experiencing an extended period of sales at the level usually reserved for the shopping frenzy of Black Friday, with reported surges reaching $11,000 (£8,800) a second. Its share price is booming, too, making its already rich founder, Jeff Bezos, even richer.

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Alone and disconnected: the woman left unable to call her dying partner

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Problems with internet and phone service were once just an inconvenience. Now they can prove to be catastrophic

Cut off by telecoms company, pensioner missed call as partner died of Covid-19

Barbara Parry* arranged to switch her phone and broadband account from Sky to Now TV in March, a week before lockdown. Instead, she was left incommunicado as her line was cancelled and her phone number reallocated.

During the following four weeks, as she pleaded in vain to be reconnected, her partner contracted Covid-19. He died four days later in hospital. Due to the blunders by Now TV, he was unable to call Parry from his deathbed and she was unable to say goodbye. The news was broken by a relative as the hospital could not get through on her cancelled number.

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Working from home? How to stay in touch and stay secure

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Covid-19 has forced millions into the unfamiliar world of the home office, where new security threats loom. Here’s how to protect yourself and colleagues

Businesses are used to being prepared for a disaster and most will have had a well-rehearsed continuity plan in place in case one struck. But even the best plan couldn’t have effectively anticipated the wholesale overnight shift to home working that Covid-19 has caused.

“As a result,” Morgan Wright, chief security adviser at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne says, “issues of privacy, collaboration, access and compliance have highlighted weakness in policies and gaps in security.” One of the problems is that even at many larger companies, being caught on the hop by the lockdown has meant that individual departments have been left to find their own ways to work collaboratively.

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UK government told not to use Zoom because of China fears

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Security services said last week that videoconferencing tool was vulnerable to surveillance

Government and parliament were told by the intelligence agencies last week not to use the videoconferencing service Zoom for confidential business, due to fears it could be vulnerable to Chinese surveillance.

The quiet warnings to limit the technology came after the cabinet had used Zoom to hold a well-publicised meeting at the end of March, a decision that was defended at the time as necessary in “unprecedented circumstances”.

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How do teenagers live in lockdown? – photo essay

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Jean-Marc Caimi and Valentina Piccinni investigated how Italian teenagers were coping with the coronavirus lockdown, working with them to take pictures using video chat apps

Some can’t wait to go out again, others don’t really want to, happy to stay home connected to the outside world only through their computer. Some are worried about the virus and others, instead, are more concerned about the climate crisis.

To give an answer to this important question, we adopted the same means teenagers use to study and communicate within their community. Zoom, Skype, WhatsApp … these video chats were our eyes to take the pictures, remotely.

Teens (and their parents) allowed us to take snapshots using the camera of their computers, tablets or mobile phones, at home, in their bedroom or where they are spending the quarantine, while they study, read, chat, play music, watch TV or exercise.

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‘Selling censorship’: proposed sale of .org web registry sparks fears for non-profits

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Planned purchase by a private equity firm leads to worries that low-cost domain option could become prohibitively expensive

Websites using .org domain names fear they could lose their web addresses as intense backlash over the domain registry’s proposed sale continues.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), the not-for-profit organization that coordinates the internet’s domain name system, is deciding whether control of .org will be sold to a private equity firm about which little is known.

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Zoom releases security updates in response to ‘Zoom-bombings’

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Company has struggled to meet security needs as user base has risen sharply amid coronavirus lockdown

The video-conferencing platform Zoom has released a new update this week in an effort to address an onslaught of security concerns surrounding the service.

Zoom says the newest version of its app, Zoom 5.0, includes encryption and new privacy controls, updates that are part of a 90-day plan to improve security and privacy on the platform.

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Bug leaves iPhones vulnerable to hackers stealing email contents

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Fault in built-in Mail app could allow attackers to read, modify or delete emails, say experts

A newly discovered bug in the built-in Mail app for iPhones could allow an attacker to read, modify and delete emails, researchers say.

Apple says it will patch the vulnerability in the next version of iOS, 13.4.5, and that users of the beta software are already protected. But until that update is made available to the general public, every other iPhone user is vulnerable to the attack, which can be used to steal the contents of emails.

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Need zing in your Zoom? Let Warhol and the avant-garde vamp up your video conferences

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It’s hard to make much of a mark in the strange, static world of video-conferencing. But we could all learn a trick or two from famous arthouse film-makers, from Jim Jarmusch to Andy Warhol

Of all the many weirdnesses of the age of lockdown, video-conferencing must be one of the weirdest. This is the first time many of us have used Zoom, FaceTime, Google Hangouts and Houseparty. And, invaluable as they are, few would disagree that they are a strange way to communicate. From the stilted family group chat to the strained business meeting, it all feels messy and unnatural. Video-conferencing is nothing like real-life conversation, nor is it like cinema or TV, even though it is essentially watching people on a screen.

However, for a certain strain of film-makers and artists, the unblinking, unmoving gaze of the webcam is familiar territory. Could the art end of cinema help ease our pain and anxiety? Could we improve our new social rituals by rethinking them as experiments in avant garde film?

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Welsh minister’s mic mistake broadcasts sweary rant to assembly

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Vaughan Gething heard decrying Labour colleague after leaving his audio live on video call

Wales’s health minister, Vaughan Gething, has learned the hard way about one of the risks of videoconferencing after he accidentally broadcast a sweary rant about one of his colleagues during a virtual session of Welsh assembly.

Having apparently left his microphone live after addressing the assembly, the minister could be heard loudly decrying his fellow Labour assembly member Jenny Rathbone.

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Fortnite owner gives up battle against Google Play store

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Epic makes its blockbuster game available in store, an embarrassing climbdown

Fortnite for Android is available through the Google Play store for the first time, almost 18 months after owners Epic Games tried to use the game’s popularity to break the app store duopoly.

The release is an embarrassing climbdown for Epic, which has sunk significant resources into building its own independent games service, and is sure to reignite accusations of anti-competitive behaviour on the parts of both Apple and Google.

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Court hearings via video ‘risk unfairness for disabled people’

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UK equalities watchdog warns move amid virus to focus on online sessions could hamper rapport and access to justice

Remote video trials could disadvantage people with learning disabilities, the equalities watchdog has warned, as courts switch to online hearings during the coronavirus crisis.

An interim report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has highlighed concerns about the impact of conducting cases without defendants being present in court.

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Amazon given €294m in tax credits as European revenues jump to €32bn

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Company says it made a loss last year due to investment and the competitive market

Amazon received €294m (£258m) in tax credits last year that it can deduct from future bills for its European business, as revenues at the online retailer rose significantly to €32bn.

The company said it received the tax credits because it made a loss last year due to its investment programme and the highly competitive retail environment across Europe and the UK.

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The good neighbour who wants to iron out the problems of the weekly wash

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A low-tech washing machine offers a way to wash where there is limited access to power and running water

With a plastic drum, plywood and a few secret components, a London-based engineer has created a rudimentary washing machine that he says will ease the workload for families with little power or water.

Nav Sawnhey has designed a £24 crank-handled machinefor people in places without reliable, affordable power.

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Hackers exploit coronavirus lockdown with fake Netflix and Disney+ pages

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Criminals seek rich pickings as viewers stuck at home flock to TV streaming sites

More than 700 fake websites mimicking Netflix and Disney+ signup pages have been created seeking to harvest personal information from consumers during the coronavirus lockdown streaming boom.

Netflix, which is expected to smash its forecast of 7 million new global subscribers when it reports first-quarter results on Tuesday, is the main target as millions of new potential customers seek entertainment while confined to their homes.

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Don’t click on the traffic lights: upstart competitor challenges Google’s anti-bot tool

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New charges for reCaptcha spur web security firm Cloudflare to develop its own identity-checking software

The days of clicking on traffic lights to prove you are not a robot could be ending after Google’s decision to charge for the tool prompted one of the web’s biggest infrastructure firms to ditch it for a competitor.

“Captcha” – an awkward acronym for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart” – is used by sites to fight automated abuses of their services. For years, Google’s version of the test, branded reCaptcha, has dominated, after it acquired the company that developed it in 2009 and offered the technology for free worldwide.

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Apple launches smaller, cheaper iPhone

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Second-generation iPhone SE resembles older models, with prices starting at £419

Apple has launched a cheaper version of its iPhone SE as it attempts to continue normal business despite the coronavirus pandemic.

The second-generation SE resembles Apple’s previous design used for its smartphones between 2014 and 2017, complete with the traditional touch ID home button instead of face recognition. It costs from £419 in the UK and $399 in the US.

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People opened up because I’m the Beavis and Butt-head guy’: Mike Judge on his new funk direction

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The writer-director’s comedies – from Office Space to Silicon Valley – always sum up the spirit of their times. So why has he made an LSD-soaked cartoon about George Clinton and Bootsy Collins?

Few writer-directors have been as consistent and ruthless at capturing the moment as Mike Judge, although he never actually intends to do so. “It’s always a shock when something comes out and it feels so relevant,” he says, in his laconic surfer-dude tone, talking to me by phone from his home in Los Angeles. “But I tend to look at stuff that feels as if it’s everywhere, but nobody’s talking about.”

Judge, 57, is so beady at spotting what’s everywhere, his shows themselves end up becoming ubiquitous, the thing everybody’s talking about. It is impossible to imagine 90s TV without his seminal hits, Beavis and Butt-Head and King of the Hill, the former satirising the worst of youth culture, the latter fondly depicting gentle American conservatism acclimatising itself to the Bill Clinton era.

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Amazon fires two employees who condemned treatment of warehouse workers

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User experience designers Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa say they lost their jobs after circulating a petition about Covid-19 risks

Amazon has fired two employees after they publicly denounced the company’s treatment of warehouse workers during the coronavirus pandemic.

The user experience designers Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa said on Tuesday they had been fired after internally circulating a petition about health risks for Amazon warehouse workers during the Covid-19 crisis. Costa had worked at the company for more than 15 years and Cunningham had been an employee for more than five.

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TikTok is the social media sensation of lockdown. Could I become its new star?

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With families and couples filming themselves dancing or performing skits, the app has become even more popular in recent weeks. I asked its British stars to help me get started

Andy Warhol predicted a time everyone would have 15 minutes of fame. He was nearly right – it is actually 15 seconds. That is the maximum duration of a video clip with music (non-music clips can last up to a minute) on TikTok, the video-sharing platform that has taken the world by storm. Favoured by under-25s, who make up its core audience, TikTok this year surpassed Facebook and WhatsApp as the world’s most downloaded non-gaming app.

TikTok’s content doesn’t take itself too seriously, and ranges from food to fashion, pranks to pets – as well as the ubiquitous dance challenges. It is a perfect fit, in other words, for the lockdown, when many of us are stuck inside and in desperate need of some silly fun. This may be why, even if you haven’t downloaded it, you suddenly find, clogging up your social media, clips of Justin Bieber dancing to I’m a Savage by Megan Thee Stallion, or Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez swapping outfits to Drake’s Flip the Switch. It seems everyone from doctors and nurses in PPE to bemused parents quarantined with teenagers are flocking to the app – and sometimes going viral in the process.

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