Category Archives: Technology

Black Americans disproportionately encounter lies online, survey finds

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Most Americans concerned about online misinformation as election nears, according to poll by watchdog group Free Press

As US presidential elections approach, the vast majority of Americans are concerned about online misinformation and fear they do not have enough accurate information on candidates, especially local ones, a new poll has shown.

While people across the political and racial spectrum reported being “very concerned” about the deliberate spread of online misinformation, the study found Black Americans are disproportionately encountering misinformation when seeking accurate news.

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Google and Apple keeping Reddit and X in app stores despite pornography due to revenue, eSafety boss says

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Commissioner says companies have ‘huge disincentive’ to abide by their own policies on adult content amid discussions of age assurance technology

Australia’s online safety regulator has accused Apple and Google of financial motives in deciding not to remove Reddit and Elon Musk’s X from their app stores for hosting pornography in violation of their own policies.

Research cited in the eSafety commissioner’s online roadmap for age verification technology for adult sites last year reported that 41% of teens aged between 16 and 18 reported seeing pornography on X – more than the 37% who viewed pornography on dedicated adult sites.

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Trump reportedly considers White House advisory role for Elon Musk

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Wall Street Journal reports pair have had several phone calls recently and that Musk could assist if Trump wins another term

Donald Trump has floated a possible advisory role for the tech billionaire Elon Musk if he were to retake the White House next year, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.

The two men, who once had a tense relationship, have had several phone calls a month since March as Trump looks to court powerful donors and Musk seeks an outlet for his policy ideas, the newspaper said, citing several anonymous sources familiar with their conversations.

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Argentinian president to meet Silicon Valley CEOs in bid to court tech titans

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Javier Milei to hold private talks with Sundar Pichai and Sam Altman as Argentina faces worst economic crisis in decades

Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, is set to meet with the leaders of some of the world’s largest tech companies in Silicon Valley this week. The far-right libertarian leader will hold private talks with Sundar Pichai of Google, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Tim Cook of Apple.

Milei also met last month with Elon Musk, who has become one of the South American president’s most prominent cheerleaders and repeatedly shared his pro-deregulation, anti-social justice message on X (formerly Twitter). Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire, has also twice visited Milei, flying to Buenos Aires to speak with him in February and May of this year.

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Kabosu, dog that inspired ‘Doge’ meme and became face of Dogecoin, dies

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Atsuko Sato announces death of her shiba inu, whose 2010 photo led her to be described as the ‘Mona Lisa of the internet’

The Japanese dog whose photo inspired a generation of oddball online jokes and the £18bn Dogecoin cryptocurrency beloved by Elon Musk has died, her owner said.

“She quietly passed away as if asleep while I caressed her,” Atsuko Sato wrote on her blog on Friday, thanking the fans of her shiba inu called Kabosu – the face of the ‘Doge’ meme.

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Tech titan Mike Lynch testifies at fraud trial that Autonomy was ‘not perfect’

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UK founder, accused of inflating sales and misleading regulators, takes stand and says he wasn’t fully responsible for firm’s decisions

The British entrepreneur Mike Lynch took the stand on Thursday in a San Francisco federal courthouse as a key witness in his own criminal fraud trial, defending his role at Autonomy, the tech firm he co-founded and then sold.

The trial continued as planned Thursday despite the defense team moving for a mistrial over alleged improper questioning of a witness by the prosecution. Lynch’s defense team called the questioning, which indirectly referenced the tech titan’s extradition, “egregious” and ‘’highly improper” in a filing.

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Tech tycoon Mike Lynch, accused of ‘massive’ fraud, set to testify at US trial

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Lawyers for founder of software firm Autonomy, charged over $11bn Hewlett-Packard deal, suggest they may move for mistrial

The British entrepreneur Mike Lynch is expected to take the stand in a San Francisco federal courthouse on Thursday as a key witness in his own criminal fraud trial, which began in March.

US authorities have charged the former software tycoon with 16 counts of wire fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy relating to his company’s acquisition deal with Hewlett-Packard in 2011. If convicted, Lynch faces up to 25 years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty.

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Nvidia reports stratospheric growth as AI boom shows no sign of stopping

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Chipmaker reports strong demand and higher-than-expected revenue even as other companies spend to develop their own chips

Nvidia reported record quarterly revenue Wednesday on the back of the explosion in corporate appetite for artificial intelligence.

“The next industrial revolution has begun – companies and countries are partnering with Nvidia … to produce a new commodity: artificial intelligence,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia.

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First companies sign up to AI safety standards on eve of Seoul summit

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Rishi Sunak says 16 international firms have committed, but standards have been criticised for lacking teeth

The first 16 companies have signed up to voluntary artificial intelligence safety standards introduced at the Bletchley Park summit, Rishi Sunak has said on the eve of the follow-up event in Seoul.

The standards, however, have been criticised for lacking teeth, with signatories committing only to work toward information sharing, invest in cybersecurity and prioritise research into societal risks.

Amazon

Anthropic

Cohere

Google / Google DeepMind

G42

IBM

Inflection AI

Meta

Microsoft

Mistral AI

Naver

Open AI

Samsung Electronics

Technology Innovation Institute

xAI

Zhipu.ai

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Productivity soars in sectors of global economy most exposed to AI, says report

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Employers in UK, one of 15 countries studied, willing to pay 14% wage premium for jobs requiring AI skills

The sectors of the global economy most heavily exposed to artificial intelligence (AI) are witnessing a marked productivity increase and command a significant wage premium, according to a report.

Boosting hopes that AI might help lift the global economy out of a 15-year, low-growth trough, a PwC study found productivity growth was almost five times as rapid in parts of the economy where AI penetration was highest than in less exposed sectors.

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Revealed: Meta approved political ads in India that incited violence

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Exclusive: Ads containing AI-manipulated images were submitted to Facebook by civil and corporate accountability groups

The Facebook and Instagram owner Meta approved a series of AI-manipulated political adverts during India’s election that spread disinformation and incited religious violence, according to a report shared exclusively with the Guardian.

Facebook approved adverts containing known slurs towards Muslims in India, such as “let’s burn this vermin” and “Hindu blood is spilling, these invaders must be burned”, as well as Hindu supremacist language and disinformation about political leaders.

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Google remains focused on its long quest for your eyeballs

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AI Overviews, announced this week, are the culmination of a long line of products dedicated to keeping you on Google.com

Google announced this week that it would begin the international rollout of its new artificial intelligence-powered search feature, called AI Overviews. When billions of people search a range of topics from news to recipes to general knowledge questions, what they see first will now be an AI-generated summary.

Google touted AI Overviews at its annual I/O developer conference as a way of delivering customers quick answers and simplifying the online search experience, but it also has another effect on the way that people engage with the internet: keeping users, and advertisers, on Google.com. It’s a new era in Google’s years-long quest for your attention.

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Binance executive denied bail in Nigeria over money laundering charges

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Tigran Gambaryan faces allegations of ‘serious criminality’ on behalf of world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange

A Nigerian court has ruled that Tigran Gambaryan, the Binance executive detained on charges of tax evasion and money laundering, can face trial on behalf of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.

In a judgment in Abuja on Friday – Gambaryan’s 40th birthday – the presiding judge, Emeka Nwite, denied the American national bail, saying he was likely to abscond.

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YouTube blocks videos set to Hong Kong protest anthem

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Court order compelled Google subsidiary to block local access to 32 videos of Glory to Hong Kong judged to be prohibited content

Alphabet’s YouTube on Tuesday said it would comply with a court decision and block access inside Hong Kong to 32 video links deemed prohibited content, in what critics say is a blow to freedoms in the financial hub amid a security clampdown.

The action follows a government application granted by Hong Kong’s court of appeal requesting the ban of a protest anthem called Glory to Hong Kong. The judges warned that dissidents seeking to incite secession could weaponize the song for use against the state.

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Young people buying large knives on Telegram and TikTok, police say

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Commander says authorities scrambling to keep up with supply trends as knife crimes rise

Young people are using sites such as Telegram and TikTok to buy large knives for use in attacks and intimidation, with some linked to Britain’s drug wars, police said.

Stephen Clayman, national lead for knife crime for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, made it clear on Tuesday that police want tougher action after a 7% year-on-year rise in knife offences, with a 20% rise in knife-point robberies.

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Biden announces 100% tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles

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White House levy to protect US makers from cheap imports likely to inflame trade tensions

The US president, Joe Biden, has announced a 100% tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles as part of a package of measures designed to protect US manufacturers from cheap imports.

In a move that is likely to inflame trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies, the White House said it was imposing more stringent curbs on Chinese goods worth $18bn.

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UK police could get Ghostbusters-style backpack devices to halt ebike getaways

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Device in development fires electromagnetic pulse that tricks ebikes and scooters into shutting off

Police officers in Britain could be armed with Ghostbusters-style devices that fire electromagnetic rays to shut down the engines of ebikes being used in a crime.

Gavin Stephens, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), said the weapon was in development and could be months away from being available, though it is expected to be longer than that.

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Australian man says border force made him hand over phone passcode by threatening to keep device indefinitely

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Tech entrepreneur who lives in the US says he has been held up at Sydney airport for hours three times in the past year

Australian Border Force officials forced an Australian-US dual national to hand over his passcodes to his phone by threatening to keep the device indefinitely and then searched it out of his view, the man has alleged.

Chris*, an Australian tech entrepreneur who lives in the US with his wife and children, said he has been held up at Sydney airport for hours three times in the past year during trips to visit his family, including most recently just over a week ago.

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Arm owner SoftBank reports £1.2bn profit as it shifts towards AI

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Tech investor led £800m funding round into UK self-driving car software company Wayve

The Japanese tech investor SoftBank made a profit for the second consecutive quarter as it tries to turn its performance around before big planned investments in artificial intelligence.

SoftBank reported net income of 231bn yen (£1.18bn) in the first three months of 2024, compared with a 57.6bn yen loss in the same period last year, according to financial results published on Monday.

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Price, speed and Elon Musk: why some Australians are ditching the NBN

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While politicians argue over who to blame for a decline in Australia’s broadband uptake, customers are seeking more affordable ways to get online

Tens of thousands of Australians are abandoning the National Broadband Network for 5G mobile and other ways of accessing the internet with experts saying three main factors are driving people away: price, speed and Elon Musk.

Despite the NBN being only a few years past completion, between the end of June 2022 and the end of April 2024 the number of customers in the most common category of services declined by more than 65,000.

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