Category Archives: Technology

IMF warns that tech giants stifle innovation and threaten stability

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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.

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Google staff call out treatment of temp workers in ‘historic’ show of solidarity

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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.

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Saudis hacked Amazon chief Jeff Bezos’s phone, says company’s security adviser

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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.

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Google revealed as unlikely go-between to help Trump-Cuba relations

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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?

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Facebook stored hundreds of millions of passwords unprotected

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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.

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500 years in 59 seconds: the race to be the world’s largest city

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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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Facebook agrees to ban discriminatory ads in civil rights settlement

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ACLU hails ‘sweeping changes’ after company criticized over ad targeting based on race, gender and age

Facebook is taking steps to block discriminatory ads for housing, employment and credit by preventing advertisers from targeting users based on race, gender, age and zip code.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other rights groups, which sued Facebook for violating civil rights laws with its ad practices, announced the “historic settlement” on Tuesday, saying “sweeping changes” would restrict illegal and discriminatory ad targeting.

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Quiz: can you identify these world cities from their density maps alone?

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The LSE Cities Urban Age Programme has created density diagrams showing the number of people living in each square kilometre of a 100km by 100km area for cities around the world. Can you identify them?

Which city is this?

Dhaka

Chicago

Shanghai

Lagos

Which city is this?

London

Paris

Rome

Madrid

Which city is this?

Buffalo

Accra

Marseilles

Brisbane

Which city is this?

Islamabad

Kabul

Karachi

New Delhi

Which city is this?

Mumbai

Cairo

Jakarta

Hong Kong

Which city is this?

Los Angeles

Vancouver

Cape Town

Taipei

Which city is this?

Recife

Newcastle

Havana

Dar es Salaam

Which city is this?

New Orleans

Malaga

Melbourne

Rio de Janeiro

Which city is this?

Toronto

New York

Sao Paulo

Barcelona

Which city is this?

Buenos Aires

Mexico City

Nairobi

Beijing

10 and above.

Well done!

3 and above.

Oh dear

4 and above.

Not bad

2 and above.

Oh dear

0 and above.

Oh dear

1 and above.

Oh dear

LSE Cities says: “Residential density measures how closely people live together. More compact cities have higher densities, while cities that sprawl and have wide open spaces between buildings have lower densities. The pattern of streets, squares and urban blocks – as well as how many people live in residential units – determines the density of a city alongside the height of individual buildings.

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Myspace loses all content uploaded before 2016

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Faulty server migration blamed for mass deletion of songs, photos and video

Myspace, the once mighty social network, has lost every single piece of content uploaded to its site before 2016, including millions of songs, photos and videos with no other home on the internet.

The company is blaming a faulty server migration for the mass deletion, which appears to have happened more than a year ago, when the first reports appeared of users unable to access older content. The company has confirmed to online archivists that music has been lost permanently, dashing hopes that a backup could be used to permanently protect the collection for future generations.

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Facebook’s local news project frustrated – by lack of local newspapers

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About 1,800 newspapers have closed in the US in the last 15 years, partly as a result of internet-based companies like Facebook

Facebook’s effort to establish a service that provides users with local news and information is being hindered by the lack of outlets where the company’s technicians can find original reporting.

Some 1,800 newspapers have closed in the US over the last 15 years, according to the University of North Carolina. Newsroom employment has declined by 45% as the industry struggles with a broken business model partly caused by the success of companies on the internet – including Facebook.

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The Cambridge Analytica scandal changed the world – but it didn’t change Facebook

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A year after devastating revelations of data misuse, Mark Zuckerberg still hasn’t fulfilled his promises to reform

It can be hard to remember from down here, beneath the avalanche of words and promises and apologies and blogposts and manifestos that Facebook has unleashed upon us over the course of the past year, but when the Cambridge Analytica story broke one year ago, Mark Zuckerberg’s initial response was a long and deafening silence.

It took five full days for the founder and CEO of Facebook – the man with total control over the world’s largest communications platform – to emerge from his Menlo Park cloisters and address the public. When he finally did, he did so with gusto, taking a new set of talking points (“We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you”) on a seemingly unending roadshow, from his own Facebook page to the mainstream press to Congress and on to an oddly earnest discussion series he’s planning to subject us to at irregular intervals for the rest of 2019.

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Technology is terrorism’s most effective ally. It delivers a global audience | Jason Burke

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The suspect’s live broadcast of the New Zealand killings reveals such acts are always as much about instilling fear as inflicting violence

Terrorism is effective because it always seems near. It always seems new. And it always seems personal. Ever since the first wave of terrorist violence broke across the newly industrialised cities of the west in the late 19th century this has been true.

It feels personal because, although statistics may show we are many times more likely to die in a banal domestic accident, we instinctively conclude from an attack on the other side of the street, the city or, in the case of New Zealand, the other side of the world, we might be next.

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Major study suggests Apple Watch can detect irregular heartbeat

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More work needed to see if wearables can help screen for heart problems, but researchers call study encouraging

A huge study suggests the Apple Watch can detect a worrisome irregular heartbeat – but experts say more work is needed to tell if using wearable technology to screen for heart problems really helps.

More than 419,000 Apple Watch users signed up for the study, which was funded by Apple and the largest ever to explore screening seemingly healthy people for atrial fibrillation (A-fib), a condition that if untreated eventually can trigger strokes.

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Facebook under criminal investigation over data sharing with tech firms – report

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Investigation by federal prosecutors adds to laundry list of inquiries since the Cambridge Analytica revelations one year ago

Facebook is under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors examining its data-sharing deals with other major technology companies, according to the New York Times.

A New York grand jury has subpoenaed records from “at least two prominent makers of smartphones and other devices”, the Times reported, citing two unnamed sources.

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Google’s Gmail and Drive suffer global outages

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Users in Australia, the US, Europe and Asia report problems with various applications for several hours

Google has been hit by outages in a host of countries around the world, with users reporting issues with Gmail, Google Drive, Hangouts and Google Maps for several hours.

Various websites that track Gmail problems and outages, showed a spike in users reporting problems with the email service from about 1pm AEDT (2am GMT).

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#BreakUpBigTech: Elizabeth Warren says Facebook just proved her point

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The platform briefly blocked some of Warren’s ads attacking it. Her response: ‘Curious why I think FB has too much power?’

Elizabeth Warren could not have asked for a better illustration for her point.

The US senator and Democratic candidate for president took aim at Facebook on Monday evening after the social network briefly blocked her campaign from running advertisements that just happened to call for breaking up Facebook.

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Google paid former executive $35m after sexual assault allegation

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Former search executive Amit Singhal was reportedly forced to resign after an employee claimed he groped her at an off-campus event

Google paid the former search executive Amit Singhal $35m in an exit package when he was reportedly forced to resign after a sexual assault investigation, according to court documents released on Monday.

Details of the exit package were revealed as part of a shareholder lawsuit against the company, one that followed a published report of payouts Google made to executives accused of sexual misconduct.

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Elizabeth Warren is right – we must break up Facebook, Google and Amazon | Robert Reich

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The titans of the new Gilded Age must be busted and the idea has bipartisan support. It’s time big tech was brought to heel

The presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren announced on Friday she wants to bust up giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon.

America’s first Gilded Age began in the late 19th century with a raft of innovations – railroads, steel production, oil extraction – but culminated in mammoth trusts run by “robber barons” like JP Morgan, John D Rockefeller, and William H “the public be damned” Vanderbilt.

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China warns US of ‘all necessary measures’ to protect Huawei

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Foreign minister suggests recent actions against Chinese firms are ‘deliberate political suppression’

China’s foreign minister has said Beijing will “take all necessary measures” to defend the rights and interests of Chinese companies such as Huawei, which is locked in an escalating legal dispute with the US.

Beijing’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, said in response to a question about the company suing the US: “It is not difficult to see that the recent actions against specific Chinese enterprises and individuals are not just judicial cases, but deliberate political suppression.

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