Thousands having difficulty accessing social networks, says tracking site
Facebook was inaccessible to some users on Sunday, according to Downdetector, a website that monitors outages.
The site showed there had been more than 7,700 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook at its peak.
Continue reading...Stratolaunch jet, brainchild of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, may be used to launch small satellites into space
A giant six-engine aircraft with the world’s longest wingspan – surpassing Howard Hughes’ infamous Spruce Goose – took off from California on its first flight on Saturday.
The behemoth, twin-fuselage Stratolaunch jet lifted off from Mojave Air and Space Port and climbed into the desert sky 70 miles north of Los Angeles. It landed two hours later.
Continue reading...Security costs for the tech billionaire and his family more than doubled last year, as an outcry over Facebook’s practices grew
Facebook more than doubled the money it spent on top executive Mark Zuckerberg’s security in 2018 to $22.6m, a regulatory filing has showed.
Zuckerberg drew a base salary of $1 for the past three years, and his “other” compensation was listed at $22.6m, most of which was for his personal security.
Continue reading...Spacecraft crashes in to lunar surface after engine and communications breakdown
An Israeli spacecraft has crashed into the lunar surface, ending the first privately funded attempt to land on the moon.
About the size of a washing machine, the 585kg (1,290lb) robotic lander experienced an engine and communication failure in the last seconds of touchdown.
Continue reading...Staff review audio in effort to help AI-powered voice assistant respond to commands
When Amazon customers speak to Alexa, the company’s AI-powered voice assistant, they may be heard by more people than they expect, according to a report.
Amazon employees around the world regularly listen to recordings from the company’s smart speakers as part of the development process for new services, Bloomberg News reports.
Continue reading...Critics say measures would be expensive and give vast censorship powers to the government
Russian politicians have approved a controversial bill that would allow Moscow to cut off the country’s internet traffic from foreign servers, in a key second reading that paves the way for the bill to become law on 1 November.
Lawmakers in the State Duma, parliament’s lower house, voted 320 to 15 to pass the proposed bill.
Continue reading...Algorithmic features have sent suggestions to wish happy birthday to those who’ve died
Facebook has promised to use artificial intelligence to stop suggesting users invite their dead friends to parties.
The site’s freshly emotionally intelligent AI is part of a rash of changes to how Facebook handles “memorialised” accounts – pages whose owner has been reported deceased, but that are kept on the social network in their memory.
Continue reading...Cryptocurrency mining added to list of industrial activities Beijing wants to phase out
Related: Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies – what digital money really means for our future
China’s state planner wants to eliminate bitcoin mining in the country, according to a draft list of industrial activities the agency is seeking to stop in a sign of growing government pressure on the cryptocurrency sector.
Continue reading...Not responding to notification could cost companies 4% of their revenue under EU law
Internet companies will be fined up to 4% of their revenue if they fail to remove terrorist content within one hour of being notified by authorities, under legislation approved by MEPs.
The civil liberties committee approved the move by 35 to one, with abstentions, but removed an obligation on companies to monitor uploaded content or use automated tools.
Continue reading...Jody Williams and Mary Wareham were leading lights in the campaign to ban landmines. Now they have autonomous weapons in their sights
It sounds like something from the outer reaches of science fiction: battlefield robots waging constant war, algorithms that determine who to kill, face-recognition fighting machines that can ID a target and take it out before you have time to say “Geneva conventions”.
This is no film script, however, but an ominous picture of future warfare that is moving ever closer. “Killer robots” is shorthand for a range of tech that has generals salivating and peace campaigners terrified at the ethical ramifications of warfare waged via digital proxies.
Continue reading...Laleh Shahravesh was arrested in March and faces up to two years in jail, according to campaign group
A British woman is facing two years in jail in Dubai for allegedly using disparaging language about her ex-husband’s new wife on Facebook, campaigners have claimed.
Laleh Shahravesh, 55, of Richmond, south-west London, was arrested together with her teenage daughter at Dubai airport in March. She faces up to two years in jail and a fine of £50,000 for two Facebook posts she made while living in the UK in 2016, according to the Detained In Dubai campaign group.
Continue reading...‘We won’t back down’: protesters express concern over pollution and protected species
For Gilles Renevier, a vet from a village south-east of Lyon, fighting Amazon’s plans to build a vast logistics centre in his area was “common sense”.
The US firm was due to begin construction of a huge centre for packing and delivery beside Lyon airport in south-east France this year, but two local associations have lodged legal files to halt the build.
Continue reading...Duke and Duchess gained one million followers on new account in less than six hours
Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, broke a record by reaching one million followers on their newly launched Instagram account in less than six hours, Guinness World Records has said.
The “sussexroyal” account was launched on Tuesday with a post featuring a monogram symbol with their names and now has 3.1 million followers.
Continue reading...Fund report calls for profits to be targeted by a tougher international tax regime
The International Monetary Fund has warned that the market power exercised by a small number of global companies threatens to stifle innovation and make it harder for central banks to deal with recessions.
Adding its contribution to the growing public debate about the corporate power exercised by the US tech giants such as Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook, the IMF said it would be concerned if there was any further increase in the clout of already dominant firms.
Continue reading...More than 900 employees sign letter criticizing abrupt firing of contractors, who make up 54% of Google’s workforce
More than 900 Google workers have signed a letter objecting to the tech giant’s treatment of temporary contractors, in what organizers are calling a “historical coalition” between Google’s full-time employees (FTEs) and temps, vendors and contractors (TVCs).
In March, Google abruptly shortened the contracts of 34 temp workers on the “personality” team for Google Assistant – the Alexa-like digital assistant that reads you the weather, manages your calendar, sends a text message, or calls you an Uber through your phone or smart speaker.
Continue reading...Chief executive allegedly targeted because he owns Washington Post, where Jamal Khashoggi was columnist
The security chief for Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, says the Saudi government had access to Bezos’s phone and gained private information from it.
Gavin de Becker, Bezos’s longtime security consultant, said he had concluded his investigation into the publication in January of leaked text messages between Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, a former television anchor whom the US National Enquirer tabloid newspaper said Bezos was dating.
Continue reading...The spandex-based controversy has been broiling in the west for years; and it’s not just men policing women’s bodies, women are doing it to themselves
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Continue reading...Tech firm has acted as US-Havana intermediary as memo says Cubans trust Google more than Trump administration
Google has worked as an intermediary between the Trump administration and the Cuban government as it has sought a deal to improve internet access on the island, according to private remarks by Google’s manager in Havana.
Related: Apple Arcade v Google Stadia: which is the future for video games?
Continue reading...Company admits to mistake and says it has no evidence of abuse – but the risk was huge
Facebook mistakenly stored “hundreds of millions” of passwords in plaintext, unprotected by any encryption, the company has admitted.
The mistake, which led to user passwords being kept in Facebook’s internal servers in an insecure way, affects “hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users, tens of millions of other Facebook users, and tens of thousands of Instagram users”, according to the social networking site. Facebook Lite is a version of Facebook created for use in nations where mobile data is unaffordable or unavailable.
Continue reading...Fascinating interactive graphic shows changes in the globe’s 10 most populous cities from 1500 to 2018
This compelling interactive “bar chart race” shows the top 10 most populous cities in the world from 1500 to 2018.
“In the early 1500s most people lived in the east, either the east of Europe and north Africa or the east of the world itself in India and China,” says John Burn-Murdoch, who created the interactive for the Financial Times.
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