Category Archives: Technology

Google to pay £183m in back taxes to Irish government

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Firm’s subsidiary in Ireland agrees to backdated settlement to be paid in addition to corporation tax for 2020

Google’s Irish subsidiary has agreed to pay €218m (£183m) in back taxes to the Irish government, according to company filings.

The US tech company, which had been accused of avoiding hundreds of millions in tax across Europe through loopholes known as the “double Irish, Dutch sandwich”, said it had “agreed to the resolution of certain tax matters relating to prior years”.

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To fight global crime, Taiwan must be included in Interpol | Letters

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Huang Chia-lu responds to the news that a Chinese official is seeking election to Interpol’s executive committee, and urges the international community to support Taiwan’s participation

You rightly point out the concerns of human rights activists and international politicians that China could misuse Interpol’s capabilities to track down overseas dissidents if Hu Binchen is elected as an executive committee member (Chinese official seeks Interpol role, sparking fears for dissidents, 15 November). One should also note that Taiwan is not included in Interpol, meaning there is a missing part in the global fight against international crime and cybercrime.

As cybercrime transcends borders, transnational cooperation is key to bringing international crime rings to justice. Taiwan’s police authorities have a hi-tech crime investigation unit and professional cybercrime investigators. Taiwan’s expertise will benefit global efforts to build a safer cyberspace.

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Can big tech ever be reined in?

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The Biden administration has shown an early determination to tackle the power of Amazon, Google, Facebook and co. But is it already too late?

When historians look back on this period, one of the things that they will find remarkable is that for a quarter of a century, the governments of western democracies slept peacefully while some of the most powerful (and profitable) corporations in history emerged and grew, without let or hindrance, at exponential speeds.

They will wonder at how a small number of these organisations, which came to be called “tech giants” (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft), acquired, and began to wield, extraordinary powers. They logged and tracked everything we did online – every email, tweet, blog, photograph and social media post we sent, every “like” we registered, every website we visited, every Google search we made, every product we ordered online, every place we visited, which groups we belonged to and who our closest friends were.

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App outage locks hundreds of Tesla drivers out of cars

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Dozen of motorists report error as company’s CEO, Elon Musk, apologises on Twitter

Hundreds of Tesla drivers were locked out of their cars at the start of the weekend after the manufacturer’s mobile app suffered an outage – and dozens voiced their complaints on social media.

Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, said on Friday that the company’s mobile application was coming back online after the app server outage. Musk was responding to a Tesla owner’s tweet, who said that he was experiencing a “500 server error” to connect his Model 3 through the iOS app in Seoul, South Korea.

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Dr Sarah Ogilvie: ‘Generation Z are savvy – but I don’t get all their memes’

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The linguist and computer scientist discusses her optimistic assessment of a misunderstood generation – and delves into the nuanced ways to text ‘OK’

Dr Sarah Ogilvie is a linguist, lexicographer and computer scientist at Harris Manchester College, Oxford, who works at the intersection of technology and the humanities. With Roberta Katz, Jane Shaw and Linda Woodhead, she is the author of Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age, which paints an optimistic portrait of a much misunderstood generation that has never known a world without the internet.

Define Gen Zers.
They are people born from the mid-1990s to around 2010. They’re followed by Generation Alpha, who are aged 10 and under, though there’s a bit of an overlap.

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Is smart tech the new domestic battle ground?

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Now that Alexa, Siri and Google have moved in, it’s only a matter of time before some of us are left out in the cold, says Emma Beddington

I came into the kitchen recently to find my husband cradling our electricity smart meter with the kind of tender attention more usually directed to a new-born, his phone clutched in his free hand. “You didn’t turn your office heater off last night,” he said. I didn’t like his tone.

“I did! I went in this morning to turn it on again!”

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Rio Tinto’s past casts a shadow over Serbia’s hopes of a lithium revolution

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People in the Jadar valley fear environmental catastrophe as Europe presses for self-sufficiency in battery technology

Photographs by Vladimir Zivojinovic

A battery sign, flashing dangerously low, appears superimposed over a view of the globe as seen from space. “Green technologies, electric cars, clean air – all of these depend on one of the most significant lithium deposits in the world, which is located right here in Jadar, Serbia,” a gravel-voiced narrator announces. “We completely understand your concerns about the environment. Rio Tinto is carrying out detailed analyses, so as to make all of us sure that we develop the Jadar project in line with the highest environmental, security and health standards.”

Beamed into the country’s living rooms on the public service channel RTS, the slick television ad, shown just after the evening news, finishes with images of reassuring scientists and a comforted young couple walking into the sunset: “Rio Tinto: Together we have the chance to save the planet.”

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Can I give you a call bark? DogPhone lets pets ring their owners

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When dog moves ball containing device it sends a signal to a laptop and launches a video call

Whether it is a silent stare or simply a rousing bark, dogs have found myriad ways to communicate with humans. Now researchers have created a hi-tech option for canines left home alone: a ball that allows them to call their owners on the old dog and bone.

The device – nicknamed the DogPhone – is a soft ball that, when moved, sends a signal to a laptop that launches a video call, and the sound of a ringing telephone.

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JPMorgan sues Tesla for $162m after Musk tweets soured share deal

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Investment bank says it lost millions because of tweets by Elon Musk that he might take electric carmaker private

JPMorgan has sued Tesla for $162.2m, accusing Elon Musk’s electric car company of “flagrantly” breaching a 2014 contract relating to stock trading options that Tesla sold to the bank.

The options, or warrants, give the holder the right to buy a company’s stock at a set “strike” price and date. The suit, filed in a Manhattan federal court, centres on a dispute over how JPMorgan repriced its Tesla warrants as a result of Musk’s notorious 2018 tweet that he was considering taking the carmaker private.

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Israeli firm’s spyware linked to attacks on websites in UK and Middle East

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Toronto-based researchers say new evidence suggests Candiru’s software used to target critics of autocratic regimes

Researchers have found new evidence that suggests spyware made by an Israeli company that was recently blacklisted in the US has been used to target critics of Saudi Arabia and other autocratic regimes, including some readers of a London-based news website.

A report by Toronto-based researchers at ESET, an internet security firm, found links between attacks against high-profile websites in the Middle East and UK, and the Israeli company Candiru, which has been called Israel’s “most mysterious cyberwarfare company”.

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Prince Harry says online misinformation is ‘global humanitarian issue’

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Duke of Sussex says issue needs to be tackled by policies including investment in local journalism

Prince Harry has described online misinformation as a “global humanitarian issue” that needs to be tackled by policies including investment in local journalism and cracking down on super-spreaders of false content.

The Duke of Sussex contributed to a report by a US thinktank into disinformation, which made 15 recommendations after a six-month study.

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US accuses Russia of ‘dangerous’ behavior after anti-satellite weapons test

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Russia fired missile at its own satellite, generating debris that US says ‘threatens interests of all nations’

The US has accused Russia of “dangerous and irresponsible behavior” after it conducted an anti-satellite weapons test that forced astronauts on the International Space Station to prepare for evacuation.

Russia fired a missile at one of its own satellites over the weekend, generating more than 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris and hundreds of pieces of smaller debris, which the US said “now threaten the interests of all nations”.

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iPhone 13 Pro Max review: Apple’s heavyweight super phone

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Top-priced, big screen, two-day battery life and cracking cameras – but just too heavy to beat the best

Apple’s latest super-sized smartphone is a beast in all directions, but is bigger really better?

The iPhone 13 Pro Max is Apple’s most expensive smartphone, starting at £1,049 ($1,099/A$1,849) – at least £100 more than other models. With the same chips, software, design and camera as the regular sized 13 Pro, size is the key differentiator.

Screen: 6.7in Super Retina XDR with ProMotion (120Hz OLED) (458ppi)

Processor: Apple A15 Bionic

RAM: 6GB

Storage: 128, 256, 512GB or 1TB

Operating system: iOS 15.1

Camera: Triple 12MP rear cameras with OIS, 12MP front-facing camera

Connectivity: 5G, wifi 6, NFC, Bluetooth 5, Lightning, ultra wideband and GNSS

Water resistance: IP68 (6 metres for 30 mins)

Dimensions: 160.8 x 78.1 x 7.7mm

Weight: 240g

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Houses of tomorrow: A more hopeful vision of domesticity, or a dystopian nightmare?

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In the future, will we find a better way to live, or will our homes be taken over by surveillance and despotic appliances?

Imagine, if you can, a small, bluish room. Wires, screens, sensors. A few keepsakes from the old world. The room’s fleshy inhabitant, confined indoors by a zoonotic pandemic, greenwashes a data-mining company from her bed. The government has made it illegal for her to step outside.

There is a communal kitchen down the corridor, which she shares with a few strangers she met online, but mostly she orders her meals via an interface and eats them here. Microphones record her interactions. A motion sensor on her wrist reminds her to optimise her performance. Filled with saudade for the dying world outside, she has bought a few rainforest plants to brighten the space. Her pocket surveillance device reminds her to water them. She catches the news: the world’s richest man has just left the Earth’s atmosphere.

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‘Tesco, how can I resist ya!’ – the unstoppable stars of stage on TikTok

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The singing sensation belting out big numbers in the veg aisle, Britney’s Oops! redone as vintage jazz, how to flirt if you’re a woman in a musical … our critic takes her seat for theatre on TikTok

Theatre TikTok threw out a lifeline for actors during lockdown with musical spin-offs and plenty of theatrical silliness that has gathered momentum since. Sam Williams’s double-act with his grandma Judi Dench kept us laughing through the pandemic as he tried to tell her jokes and she foiled his punchlines. The duo seem to have retired but the videos are still up and enormously entertaining.

The best of thespian TikTok superstars combine fabulous voices with clever comic skits: Katiejoyofosho features highly among them, composing her own parody musicals including a Broadway show in one video “after Amazon buys its own theatre” which contains regular adverts and a branded backdrop among the rousing musical solos, and another called How to Flirt if You’re a Woman in a Musical. Meanwhile, Dales­_drama is an 18-year-old “musical theatre kid” who performs a mix of kooky cosplay (Peter Pettigrew from Harry Potter pops up repeatedly) and gloriously sung duets such as George Salazar’s Michael in the Bathroom (from her own bathroom) and sometimes strums along on the ukulele.

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Apple Watch Series 7 review: bigger screen, faster charging, still the best

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Small updates keep Apple at top of smartwatch market, even if it’s not worth upgrading from recent models

The Apple Watch gets a bigger, better screen, faster charging and a small price cut for 2021, which is enough to keep it at the top of the smartwatch market.

The Series 7 version costs from £369 ($399/A$599) and, despite being £10 cheaper than last year’s Series 6, is Apple’s most expensive smartwatch, above the Watch SE costing from £249 ($279/A$429). It requires an iPhone 6S or newer and does not work with Android.

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Shake your frozen pizza! The scrappy have-a-go exuberance of dance on TikTok

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From tap stars duetting with Gene Kelly to Gordon Ramsay twisting with his daughter, TikTok is where performers – large, small, amateur, pro – drop the facade and dance till their toes are raw

TikTok is made for dance. The most popular TikToker – Charli D’Amelio, 17, with 9.9bn likes – is a dancer, or started out as one. And it is the platform that’s launched or spread a thousand dance trends, from the #toosieslide to the #TheGitUpChallenge, via the Floss, the Dougie and the Milly Rock.

Unlike the slick pros of Instagram, or the archive performances on YouTube, TikTok is just about the pure joy of dancing, whoever you are. Size, shape, experience and natural grace are immaterial. It’s essentially the school playground writ very large, the silly routines and memes that used to get passed around, with everyone miming the lyrics to whatever was on Top of the Pops last night.

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Bitcoin price surges to record high of more than $68,000

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Other cryptocurrencies such as ethereum also reach records as investors hedge against inflation

The bitcoin price has reached a new record high, breaking through $68,000 (£50,000), and analysts predict that the world’s best-known cryptocurrency will rise further in the coming weeks.

This beats the previous record high set in late October, when bitcoin reached nearly $67,700 before falling back again when investors discovered a new cryptocurrency, shiba inu. Other cryptocurrencies have also risen to record highs, such as ethereum, which soared to $4,837.

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Hacking of activists is latest in long line of cyber-attacks on Palestinians

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Analysis: while identity of hackers is not known in this case, Palestinians have long been spied on by Israeli military

The disclosure that Palestinian human rights defenders were reportedly hacked using NSO’s Pegasus spyware will come as little surprise to two groups of people: Palestinians themselves and the Israeli military and intelligence cyber operatives who have long spied on Palestinians.

While it is not known who was responsible for the hacking in this instance, what is very well documented is the role of the Israeli military’s 8200 cyberwarfare unit – known in Hebrew as the Yehida Shmoneh-Matayim – in the widespread spying on Palestinian society.

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Will Elon Musk abide by Twitter poll and sell 10% of his Tesla shares?

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World’s wealthiest person says proposed billionaires tax led to poll, the result of which sent price falling

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and world’s richest person, asked his 62.8 million Twitter followers over the weekend whether he should sell $21bn (£15.5bn) worth of shares in the electric car company in order to pay tax. Tweeting he would “abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes”, 58% of those who responded said “yes”, he should sell the shares, sending Tesla’s share price down 5% in pre-market trading on Monday.

Why did he do it?
Musk, who is sitting on a paper fortune of more than $338bn in Tesla and Space-X shares, proposed selling 10% of his Tesla shares in order to generate enough money to pay a proposed “billionaires tax” on “unrealised capital gains”.

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