Category Archives: Technology

‘There’s no way to stop this’: Oakland braces for the arrival of tech firm Square

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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has signed a deal to move his payments company to Oakland – which activists say will only exacerbate an already brutal housing crisis

Photographs by Jason Henry

The knocks on Maria Espinoza’s front door became a nightly occurrence.

If the 60-year-old Oakland woman wasn’t home, her frightened partner would turn off the lights and TV and remain silent. On evenings Espinoza did answer the door, her new landlord would be outside with the same question: When are you moving out?

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Bob Collymore, Kenya’s telecoms mogul, dies aged 61

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Tributes pour in for head of Safaricom, who helped east Africa pioneer cashless payments long before Apple Pay

Bob Collymore, the chief executive of east Africa’s largest and most profitable mobile network operator Safaricom, died on Monday aged 61, after a two-year battle with cancer.

Tributes poured in from across east Africa for the Guyana-born British businessman, who steered Safaricom through nearly a decade of innovative expansion during which its user base doubled and profits increased 380%, turning it into a $10.8bn company. According to the company’s most recent annual report, Safaricom’s business contributed 6.5% to Kenya’s total GDP in 2018.

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White House insists Trump Huawei reversal not ‘catastrophic mistake’

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  • Larry Kudlow defends move on sales ban after China talks
  • Rubio and Barasso among Republicans concerned by ploy

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow insisted on Sunday Donald Trump is not backing off national security concerns, despite agreeing to allow US companies to sell some components to Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.

Related: US-China trade talks back on track, says Trump

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Scott Morrison wins G20 support to root out terrorist content on the internet

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Australian prime minister convinces world leaders to take action following the Christchurch massacre

The world’s leaders have pushed social media giants to root out terrorism and violent extremist content on the internet.

The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, earned a victory at the G20 summit by convincing all leaders of the world’s major economies to agree to take action, inspired by the live-streamed Christchurch massacre.

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Jony Ive, Apple designer behind iPhone and iMac, to exit company after 30 years

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Ive to remain ‘very involved’ with Apple as he launches new creative company

Jony Ive, the chief architect of groundbreaking and distinctive designs from the iMac to the iPhone, announced on Thursday that he is leaving Apple after nearly 30 years.

Ive’s departure, which was announced in an exclusive interview with the Financial Times, is sure to set off shock waves in the tech and design worlds, but the 52-year-old Briton will remain involved with Apple. He plans to launch a new creative company called LoveFrom – and said Apple will be his first client.

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Tired of Google following you? It is now easier to clear location data

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New functionality automatically deletes history of places users have visited

It is now slightly easier to opt out of Google’s panopticon, with the introduction of new controls from the search engine to automatically clear your data after a set period of time.

By default, Google saves a permanent history of everything a user has searched for, every website they have visited, activity from any other app, site or device that uses Google services, and a record of their physical movements gleaned from using Google Maps or an Android device.

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Reddit ‘quarantines’ its biggest pro-Trump message board

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Visitors to the subreddit The_Donald will see warning about its ‘encouragement of violence towards police and officials’

Reddit has taken steps to “quarantine” the largest pro-Donald Trump community on its site, The_Donald, due to “repeated rule-breaking behavior” and, in recent days, “encouragement of violence towards police officers and public officials in Oregon”.

Visitors to the The_Donald message board, which describes itself as “a never-ending rally dedicated to the 45th President of the United States, Donald J Trump” and has more than 750,000 subscribers, will be greeted with a message about the reasons for the quarantine before they can click through to the site. The quarantine also restricts the message board, known as a subreddit, from generating revenue and limits its popular posts from reaching an audience in other parts of Reddit.

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BMW aims to double electric and hybrid sales in next two years

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Carmaker to have 25 electrified models on sale by 2023 as strict new EU rules loom

BMW is accelerating its push away from the internal combustion engine towards battery technology, as the German carmaker seeks to double the number of electric and hybrid vehicles it sells in the next two years.

The company will have 25 electrified models on sale in 2023, two years earlier than previously planned, it announced on Tuesday. More than half of the vehicles will be fully electric.

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Google sister company releases details for controversial Toronto project

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Stakeholders say unanswered questions remain over scale of Sidewalk Labs’ hi-tech redevelopment scheme for city’s waterfront

The Google sister company behind a controversial, hi-tech redevelopment scheme for a swath of Toronto’s waterfront has released the first detailed outline of an ambitious project, but stakeholders say that unanswered questions remain over data collection and the scale of the plan.

The 1,500-page plan unveiled in Toronto on Monday reveals that Sidewalk Labs intends to spend C$1.3bn (US$900m) on the project that will involve “raincoats for buildings”, heated and illuminated sidewalks, affordable housing, tall timber structures and innovations to support sustainability and environmentalism.

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Instagram influencer staged ‘surprise’ engagement weekend

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Marissa Fuchs posted photos of disbelief, but marketers were sent itinerary months before

A public proposal is a risky thing to attempt. For every couple whose love for each other is perfectly in tune, there is a partner who has woefully misjudged their lover’s desire for public attention, grand romantic gestures, or simply marriage full stop.

So Gabriel Grossman might have been taking a huge risk when he and his girlfriend, the Instagram influencer Marissa Casey Fuchs, embarked on not just a public proposal, but a 48-hour-long surprise holiday scavenger hunt, exhaustively documented by the couple on their respective Instagram accounts. What if she’d said no? Or decided that this precious moment was too personal to be shared with her audience of 193,000 people?

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Facebook usage has collapsed since scandals, data shows

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Company’s own upbeat figures thrown into doubt by business analytics firm Mixpanel

Facebook usage has plummeted over the last year, even as the company continues to insist that its use has stayed stable or even grown in the same period, according to data seen by the Guardian.

Since April 2018, the first full month after the news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in the Observer, actions on Facebook such as likes, shares and posts have dropped by almost 20%, according to the business analytics firm Mixpanel.

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Tech firms to check suppliers after mining revelations in Tanzania

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Apple says it is ‘deeply committed to responsible sourcing of materials’

Electronics companies, including Canon, Apple and Nokia, are re-evaluating their supply chains following reports they may be using gold extracted from a Tanzanian mine that has been criticised for environmental failures.

Over the past 10 years, at the North Mara goldmine – which is operated by London-listed Acacia Mining – there have been more than a dozen killings of intruding locals by security personnel.

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Russia is not alone in exploiting Africa | Letters

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Tracey Lindner says the scramble for Africa is largely about securing resources that are crucial for military and civilian digital technology. Terry McGinn shines a spotlight on the US

Foreign involvement in Africa is far from unique to Russia (Leaked documents reveal Russia’s efforts to exert influence in Africa, 12 June). The new scramble for Africa involves more powers than the first round over a century ago. This time it’s in part about securing resources such as oil, gas and rare earth metals crucial for military and civilian digital technology, and denying these resources to rival powers.

The United States Africa Command (Africom) now has 7,500 American troops active in all but one African country, up from 6,000 in 2017. Apart from its huge base in Djibouti, controlling the narrow strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, a vital chokepoint through which all shipping using the Suez Canal has to pass – most importantly (for the Americans) Chinese shipping – the US has constructed small “lily pad” bases, whose presence gives the US a strong military capability.

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UK rights advocate co-owns firm whose spyware is ‘used to target dissidents’

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Exclusive: Yana Peel co-owns NSO Group that licensed Pegasus software to authoritarian regimes

A leading human rights campaigner and head of a prestigious London art gallery is the co-owner of an Israeli cyberweapons company whose software has allegedly been used by authoritarian regimes to spy on dissidents, the Guardian can reveal.

Yana Peel, the chief executive of the Serpentine Galleries and a self-proclaimed champion of free speech, co-owns NSO Group, a $1bn (£790m) Israeli tech firm, according to corporate records in the US and Luxembourg.

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Canadian minister dismisses suggestion to block Huawei CFO’s extradition

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Chrystia Freeland said move would set a dangerous precedent while Meng Wanzhou will challenge extradition request

Canada’s foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, has dismissed a suggestion that Ottawa block the extradition of a top executive from China’s Huawei to the US, saying it would set a dangerous precedent.

Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested on US fraud charges in Vancouver last December, will challenge Washington’s extradition request at hearings that are set to begin next January.

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Facebook emails seem to show Zuckerberg knew of privacy issues, report claims

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Firm has uncovered emails that appear to show chief executive’s connection to potentially problematic practices, WSJ reports

Facebook has uncovered emails that appear to show Mark Zuckerberg’s connection to potentially damaging privacy practices at the company, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The emails were uncovered as part of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation that began after the Guardian reported that the personal data of 50 million Facebook users had been improperly harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked on Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign.

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Doctored video of sinister Mark Zuckerberg puts Facebook to the test

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Last month Facebook declined to remove a manipulated video of Nancy Pelosi even after it was viewed millions of times

A doctored video of Mark Zuckerberg delivering a foreboding speech has been posted to Instagram, in a stunt that put Facebook’s content moderation policies to the test.

Videos known as “deepfakes” use artificial intelligence to manipulate the appearance and voices of individuals, often celebrities, into theoretically real-looking footage. They are likely to become the next wave in the battles over disinformation online.

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Radiohead release hours of hacked MiniDiscs to benefit Extinction Rebellion

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Thom Yorke describes hours of recordings from OK Computer sessions as ‘not v interesting’, while climate activists thank the band for ‘unprecedented support’

Radiohead have released a vast collection of unreleased tracks made during the sessions for 1997 album OK Computer, after a MiniDisc archive owned by frontman Thom Yorke was hacked last week by an unnamed person, who reportedly held the recordings to ransom for $150,000.

The band have now made the 18 MiniDisc recordings, most of them around an hour in length, available on Bandcamp for £18. Proceeds will go to climate activists Extinction Rebellion.

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Google made $4.7bn from news sites in 2018, study claims

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News Media Alliance says revenue was almost as much as that of entire online news industry, although some question methodology

Google made $4.7bn in advertising from news content last year, almost as much as the revenue of the entire online news industry, according to a study released on Monday.

According to the News Media Alliance, between 16% and 40% of Google search results are news content. Google’s revenue from its distribution of news content is only $400m less than the $5.1bn brought in by the United States news industry as a whole from digital advertising last year.

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