Category Archives: Technology

Spain hopes domestic tasks app will ensure men pull their weight

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Free app designed to shed light on ‘mental load’ overwhelmingly carried by women when it comes to chores

The Spanish government is hoping to encourage men to do more at home by developing a free app that will log how much time each household or family member spends on domestic chores.

Announcing the measure in Geneva earlier this week, Spain’s secretary of state for equality, Ángela Rodríguez, said the aim was to shed light on the invisible “mental load” overwhelmingly carried by women when it comes to domestic tasks.

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UK will lead on ‘guard rails’ to limit dangers of AI, says Rishi Sunak

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PM sounds a more cautious note after calls from tech experts and business leaders for moratorium

The UK will lead on limiting the dangers of artificial intelligence, Rishi Sunak has said, after calls from some tech experts and business leaders for a moratorium.

Sunak said AI could bring benefits and prove transformative for society, but it had to be introduced “safely and securely with guard rails in place”.

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Man accused of stabbing Cash App founder Bob Lee pleads not guilty

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The San Francisco district attorney has alleged Nima Momeni planned to kill Lee and left him to ‘slowly die’

The man accused of fatally stabbing Cash App founder Bob Lee has pleaded not guilty to murder.

Nima Momeni, 38, was arraigned on Thursday in a San Francisco courtroom on a single murder charge in Lee’s death last month.

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Montana becomes first US state to ban TikTok

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Greg Gianforte, the governor, signed legislation prohibiting mobile app stores from offering the video-sharing platform by next year

Montana has became the first US state to ban TikTok after the governor signed legislation prohibiting mobile application stores from offering the app within the state by next year.

The move is among the most dramatic in a series of US escalations against TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance. TikTok has come under increasing scrutiny over its ties to China, amid concerns that such links could pose a national security threat.

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Elon Musk: I will tweet what I want even if it loses me money

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Twitter owner and Tesla chief defends tweet about George Soros after being accused of antisemitism

Elon Musk has said he will continue sending controversial tweets even it loses him money, as he defended himself against accusations of antisemitism over tweets about George Soros.

The Twitter owner and Tesla chief executive said he is “allowed to say what I want to”, as he defended a tweet posted on Tuesday saying the billionaire financier “reminds me of Magneto” – the Jewish villain in the X-Men series.

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Ministers looking at body-worn facial recognition technology for police

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Government’s intentions revealed in document produced for surveillance camera commissioner

Ministers are calling for facial recognition technology to be “embedded” in everyday policing, including potentially linking it to the body-worn cameras officers use as they patrol streets.

Until now, police use of live facial recognition in England and Wales has been limited to special operations such as football matches and public events such as the coronation.

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Vice files for bankruptcy protection amid cut-price sale to consortium

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Digital publisher and owner of Vice News and Vice TV was once valued at $6bn but has agreed sale for $225m

Vice, the once high-flying media startup that reached a peak valuation of nearly $6bn (£5bn), has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US as the digital publisher engineers a cut-price sale to a group of lenders.

The company, whose assets include Vice News, Motherboard, Refinery29 and Vice TV, has agreed a sale to a consortium that includes Fortress Investment Group, Soros Fund Management and Monroe Capital for $225m in the form of a credit bid for its assets as well as assuming Vice’s “significant liabilities”.

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Irish Times apologises for hoax AI article about women’s use of fake tan

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The piece ran on 11 May and accused people who use fake tan of mocking those with naturally dark skin

The Irish Times has apologised for running an article about Irish women’s use of fake tan that was submitted by a hoaxer who used artificial intelligence.

The editor, Ruadhán Mac Cormaic, said on Sunday that it had fallen victim to “a deliberate and coordinated deception” that showed a need for stronger controls.

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Tucker Carlson to revive show on Twitter after Fox News dismissal

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Host was fired by the news network last month in the aftermath of its $787.5m settlement with Dominion over election lies

Tucker Carlson will be reviving his show on Twitter, after being abruptly dismissed from Fox News last month.

In a tweet captioned “We’re back,” Carlson on Tuesday shared a video discussing his next moves. The former host said he would be taking his show to Twitter, which he described as “the last remaining platform in the world” to allow free speech.

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Violent porn acts occurring in sexual abuse between under-18s, report finds

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Children’s commissioner for England calls for ‘robust’ measures in UK’s online safety bill to protect young people

England’s children’s commissioner has called for the “most robust” online protections for under-18s after publishing research examining links between sexual abuse cases and pornography.

In the second of a series of reports exploring the impact on children, Rachel de Souza said she wanted to “turn the tide on pornography’s harms to children”.

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EU parliament report calls for tighter regulation of spyware

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Non-binding vote bans surveillance software after concluding Hungary and Poland used it to track journalists and opponents

The EU needs tighter regulation of the spyware industry, a European parliament special committee has said, after concluding that Hungary and Poland had used surveillance software to illegally monitor journalists, politicians and activists.

A special European parliament committee voted on Monday for a temporary ban on the sale, acquisition and use of spyware while the bloc draws up common EU standards based on international law. The moratorium would be lifted only on strict conditions, including independent investigations into the abuse of spyware in the EU.

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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wins medals on jiu-jitsu debut

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Tech billionaire, 38, surprises onlookers by winning gold and silver medal at tournament in Redwood City, California

Mark Zuckerberg is adding one more title to his résumé: medal-winning martial artist.

The Facebook and Meta founder won gold and silver medals at his very first Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament in Redwood City, California, to the shock of many in the martial arts community and probably more widely.

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EU lawyers say plan to scan private messages for child abuse may be unlawful

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Under proposed ‘chat controls’ regulation, any encrypted service provider could be forced to screen for ‘identifiers’

An EU plan under which all WhatsApp, iMessage and Snapchat accounts could be screened for child abuse content has hit a significant obstacle after internal legal advice said it would probably be annulled by the courts for breaching users’ rights.

Under the proposed “chat controls” regulation, any encrypted service provider could be forced to survey billions of messages, videos and photos for “identifiers” of certain types of content where it was suspected a service was being used to disseminate harmful material.

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The digital media bubble has burst. Where does the industry go from here?

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Buzzfeed, Vice, Gawker and Drudge Report are all traffic-war casualties, but they succeeded in shaking up the media landscape

Toward the end of Traffic, a new account of the early rock n roll years of internet publishing, Ben Smith writes that the failings of Buzzfeed News had come about as a result of a “utopian ideology, from a kind of magical thinking”.

No truer words, perhaps, for a digital-based business that for a decade paddled in a warm bath of venture capital funding but never fully controlled its pricing and distribution, a basic business requirement that applies to information as much as it does to selling lemonade in the school yard or fossil fuels.

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EU urged to protect grassroots AI research or risk losing out to US

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Experts warn Brussels it cannot afford to leave artificial intelligence in the hands of foreign firms such as Google

The EU has been warned that it risks handing control of artificial intelligence to US tech firms if it does not act to protect grassroots research in its forthcoming AI bill.

In an open letter coordinated by the German research group Laion, or Large-scale AI Open Network, the European parliament was told that “one-size-fits-all” rules risked eliminating open research and development.

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UK competition watchdog launches review of AI market

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CMA to look at underlying systems of artificial intelligence tools amid concerns over false information

The UK competition watchdog has fired a shot across the bows of companies racing to commercialise artificial intelligence technology, announcing a review of the sector as fears grow over the spread of misinformation and major disruption in the jobs market.

As pressure builds on global regulators to increase their scrutiny of the technology, the Competition and Markets Authority said it would look at the underlying systems, or foundation models, behind AI tools such as ChatGPT. The initial review, described by one legal expert as a “pre-warning” to the sector, will publish its findings in September.

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Brazil receives pushback from tech companies on ‘fake news’ bill

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Brazilian government has accused Alphabet of interference after it placed advertising on its search homepage and YouTube

Brazil’s government is taking a stand against major tech companies over a new internet regulation that is shaping up to be one of the world’s strongest legislations on social media.

Bill 2630, also known as the ‘fake news’ law, puts the onus on the internet companies, search engines and social messaging services to find and report illegal material, instead of leaving it to the courts, charging hefty fines for failures to do so.

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Police accused over use of facial recognition at King Charles’s coronation

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Met says technology will not be used to target protesters or activists, but campaigners say use is ‘extremely worrying’

The Metropolitan police has been accused of using the coronation to stage the biggest live facial recognition operation in British history.

The force said on Wednesday it intended to use the controversial technology, which scans faces and matches them against a list of people police want for alleged crimes and could identify convicted terrorists mingling in the crowds.

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Dyson to build new factory in Singapore and expand in UK and Philippines

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Investments in Bristol and Santo Tomas in the Philippines will be worth £100m and £166m respectively

Dyson has revealed plans to build a new battery factory in Singapore, alongside investments by the maker of vacuum cleaners and dryers in technology centres in the UK and the Philippines.

The company, run by the billionaire Sir James Dyson, said the investments in Bristol in the UK and Santo Tomas in the Philippines would be worth £100m and £166m respectively. The Singapore investment will be significantly larger.

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Amnesty International criticised for using AI-generated images

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Group has removed AI images used to promote their reports on social media, including fake photos of Colombia’s 2021 protests

While the systemic brutality used by Colombian police to quell national protests in 2021 was real and is well documented, photos recently used by Amnesty International to highlight the issue were not.

The international human rights advocacy group has come under fire for posting images generated by artificial intelligence in order to promote their reports on social media – and has since removed them.

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