Internet downtime for the city averages 70 hours a year, with 11m Britons losing almost two days a year
Almost 11 million consumers have suffered a broadband blackout lasting more than three hours over the last year, with Nottingham named Britain’s “outage capital”.
The average UK household lost a total of almost two days of internet time as a result of loss of service, power cuts and maintenance, figures show.
Continue reading...Even before the supreme court decision to overturn Roe v Wade, the trend to ditch the apps began amid fears of prosecution
Many American women in recent days have deleted period tracking apps from their cellphones, amid fears the data collected by the apps could be used against them in future criminal cases in states where abortion has become illegal.
The trend already started last month when a draft supreme court opinion that suggested the court was set to overturn Roe v Wade was leaked, and has only intensified since the court on Friday revoked the federal right to abortion
Continue reading...US-brokered summit discusses shared threat of Tehran’s growing missile and drone capabilities
Top military officials from Israel and Saudi Arabia have met in secret US-brokered talks to discuss defence coordination against Iran, according to a report.
Delegations from Riyadh, as well as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan and Egypt, met the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) chief of staff in the Egyptian town of Sharm el-Sheikh in March, the Wall Street Journal revealed on Sunday, citing US and regional officials.
Continue reading...Private information collected and retained by companies could be weaponized to prosecute abortion seekers and providers
After the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade on Friday, calls increased for tech companies to take a stand about the use of online data to incriminate individuals seeking or providing abortion services.
Abortion and civil rights advocates have warned that there are few federal regulations on what information is collected and retained by tech firms, making it easy for law enforcement officials to access incriminating data on location, internet searches and communication history.
Continue reading...Nio criticised over statement that said accident at Shanghai HQ was ‘not caused by the vehicle’
A leading Chinese electric car company has said two people were killed when one of its vehicles fell from the third floor of its Shanghai headquarters.
Nio, a homegrown brand sometimes seen as a potential rival to Tesla, said the incident happened at about 5.20pm on Wednesday. One of the victims was its employee, and the other from a partner company. They were both inside the vehicle when it fell.
Continue reading...Jeremy Maluta reveals he is behind pro-Labor Twitter account PRGuy17 but says he has no media experience or connection to Daniel Andrews
The man behind the formerly anonymous pro-Labor Twitter account PRGuy17 has unmasked himself, after far-right figure Avi Yemini attempted to use the courts to reveal whether the account had ties to the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews.
Jeremy Maluta told YouTuber Friendlyjordies in a video released on Friday that he has no PR or social media experience, works in an industry completely unrelated to politics or the media, and has no connections to Andrews.
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Continue reading...Company also restricts use of custom neural voice technology owing to deepfake concerns
Microsoft is overhauling its artificial intelligence ethics policies and will no longer let companies use its technology to do things such as infer emotion, gender or age using facial recognition technology, the company has said.
As part of its new “responsible AI standard”, Microsoft says it intends to keep “people and their goals at the centre of system design decisions”. The high-level principles will lead to real changes in practice, the company says, with some features being tweaked and others withdrawn from sale.
Continue reading...Sensor tech can alert wearer to Covid early, helping to prevent onward transmission
Health trackers worn on the wrist could be used to spot Covid-19 days before any symptoms appear, according to researchers.
Growing numbers of people worldwide use the devices to monitor changes in skin temperature, heart and breathing rates. Now a new study shows that this data could be combined with artificial intelligence (AI) to diagnose Covid-19 even before the first tell-tale signs of the disease appear.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Personnel risk identification by running GPS ‘segments’ around top-secret sites
Unidentified operatives have been using the fitness tracking app Strava to spy on members of the Israeli military, tracking their movements across secret bases around the country and potentially observing them as they travel the world on official business.
By placing fake running “segments” inside military bases, the operation – the affiliation of which has not been uncovered – was able to keep tabs on individuals who were exercising on the bases, even those who have applied the strongest possible account privacy settings.
Continue reading...Ballistic missile interception system trial follows North Korean tests and deployment of US THAAD system in South Korea
China has claimed a successful test of a land-based ballistic missile interception system amid heightened tensions in Asia, in a move its defence ministry described as “defensive and not aimed at any country”.
Beijing has in recent years been ramping up research into all sorts of missiles, from those that can destroy satellites in space to advanced nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, as part of a modernisation overseen by President Xi Jinping. It came after North Korea conducted a series of missile tests, which prompted South Korea and the US to warn that Pyongyang could conduct a nuclear test at any time.
Continue reading...Kim Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather among those being sued, but prosecuting fraud in the crypto arena is notoriously difficult
With investors worldwide looking at a collective $1.5tn in recent cryptocurrency losses, a blizzard of class-action lawsuits are being prepared. One big question is: who, if anyone, is to blame – and who could be held to account?
With inflation and interest rates rising, the best-known cryptocurrencies have been hit with heavy and continuing losses: Bitcoin has lost more than 50% of its value this year; Ethereum, its largest rival, is down 65%; and the total value of crypto assets has dropped to less than $1tn from its November 2021 peak of $3tn. US federal regulators say 46,000 people have reported losing $1bn in crypto to scams since January 2021.
Continue reading...The company has said that Oracle will store all private information and is limiting the number of employees with those privileges
TikTok has said that Oracle will store all the data from its US users, in a bid to allay fears about its safety in the hands of a platform owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.
The move comes as a report from BuzzFeed news, citing leaked audio from TikTok in-house meetings, said ByteDance employees in China have repeatedly accessed private information about US TikTok users.
Continue reading...The hip-hop mogul loves to rap about his roots in Brooklyn’s Marcy housing projects. But classes in cryptocurrency show the billionaire is out of touch, residents say
Marcy Houses, the 28-acre public housing development in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, is best-known as a pillar of rapper-turned-mogul Jay-Z’s New York persona. Built in 1949 as part of a push by the New York City Housing Authority to house the city’s low-income residents, Marcy had fallen into a state of dangerous disrepair by the 1970s when Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, was growing up there.
“Where I’m from, Marcy son, ain’t nothing nice,” he raps in “Where I’m From”. “Marcy me, just the way I am always gonna be,” he declares in 2017’s Marcy Me.
Continue reading...Chinese cyberspace is filled with videos showing violence against women and activists say only real social change will stop the abuse
Tang Ping, 31, a mother-of-two in the southern Chinese city of Nanning, says in 2014 when her first child was six months old, her husband – an academic – began routinely beating her. She felt hurt but also ashamed, blaming herself for not being a good enough wife. She did not know what to do.
Five years ago, after another round of violence, she finally summoned the courage to report her husband to the police. “I was told my injuries were not serious, therefore they could not intervene,” she says, as she prepares to legally dissolve the marriage this week.
Continue reading...Ukrainian president attends Paris trade show as electronic apparition, urging tech companies to aid ‘digital revolution’ on lend-lease terms
Volodymyr Zelenskiy referenced Star Wars and the second world war as the Ukrainian president appeared as a hologram at a conference in Paris to seek aid from big tech firms.
He told a crowd of hundreds at the VivaTech trade show that he was offering technology firms a unique chance to rebuild Ukraine as a fully digital democracy.
Continue reading...Consumer champion Justin Gutmann alleges older iPhones made slower to cope with software updates
A consumer champion has launched a more than £750m legal claim against Apple, linked to an incident in 2017 relating to a power management tool on older iPhones.
Justin Gutmann has accused the tech giant of slowing down the performance of iPhone handsets – a process known as “throttling” – by hiding a power management tool in software updates to combat performance issues and stop older devices from shutting down suddenly.
Continue reading...Experts say spread of misinformation and use of encrypted services drives far-right extremists and racism
The federal government needs to take action against encrypted messaging apps like Telegram to curb the rise of far-right extremism, a Victorian inquiry has been told.
Dr Belinda Barnet, a media lecturer at Swinburne University, told a hearing that far-right extremists had initially been sharing hateful content on mainstream sites such as Facebook and Twitter but were increasingly being deplatformed.
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Continue reading...Deal – which would require approval from US and Israel – would give L3Harris control over controversial Pegasus tool
The US defence contractor L3Harris is in talks to take over NSO Group’s surveillance technology, in a possible deal that would give an American company control over one of the world’s most sophisticated and controversial hacking tools.
Multiple sources confirmed that discussions were centred on a sale of the Israeli company’s core technology – or code – as well as a possible transfer of NSO personnel to L3Harris. But any agreement still faces significant hurdles, including requiring the blessing of the US and Israeli governments, which have not yet given the green light to a deal.
Continue reading...Justices reject planned ballot measure, citing proposal limiting companies’ liability for accidents
Massachusetts’ top court on Tuesday blocked an effort to ask voters whether app-based ride-share and delivery drivers should be treated as independent contractors rather than employees, in a setback for companies such as Uber and Lyft.
The unanimous decision by the Massachusetts supreme judicial court marked a victory for labor activists who sued and argued the ballot measure proposal contained loopholes that would create a sub-minimum wage for drivers for the companies.
Continue reading...World’s richest person to take questions from employees amid concerns over attempted takeover
Elon Musk will speak to Twitter employees this week for the first time since launching his $44bn (£36bn) bid in April, a source said on Monday, citing an email from Twitter chief executive, Parag Agrawal, to staff.
The meeting is scheduled for Thursday, and Musk will take questions directly from Twitter employees, the source added.
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