Four-person crew asked for the public’s help in reaching fundraising target of $200m for the children’s charity St Jude
Elon Musk surprised his first all-private crew of space tourists with a welcome home gift after their trailblazing trip to orbit ended on Saturday night: a $50m donation to the children’s charity St Jude.
Related: ‘The point is ambition’: are we ready to follow Netflix into space?
Continue reading...Kerim Sabuncuoğlu – just one winner in this year’s Ocean photography awards – tells the story behind his picture of a moray eel that also shows the wider perils of ‘ghost fishing’
In July, off the Turkish port city of Bodrum, Kerim Sabuncuoğlu stepped from the edge of a boat into the azure Aegean Sea and began to descend. A scuba diver with more than 30 years’ experience, he took up underwater photography in 2002 and has since devoted considerable amounts of time and money to his “out-of-control hobby” – capturing the wonders of the ocean on camera so that “the less fortunate people above” can also marvel at them.
Sabuncuoğlu has travelled the world, photographing marine life in Palau, Cuba and the Galápagos islands and winning several awards for his work. Closer to home in Bodrum, he was embarking on a standard dive with a group of friends, equipped with a Nikon D800 camera. The camera had an 85mm micro Nikkor lens and was clad in Nexus underwater housing, with a single Backscatter snoot to train light on the subject.
Continue reading...Exclusive: privacy concerns ‘must not delay use of neuralMatch algorithm to protect victims of abuse’
Child protection experts from across the world have called on Apple to implement new scanning technologies urgently to detect images of child abuse.
In August, Apple announced plans to use a tool called neuralMatch to scan photos being uploaded to iCloud online storage and compare them to a database of known images of child abuse.
Continue reading...Navalny’s supporters say companies deleted tactical voting app from stores after pressure from Kremlin
Supporters of the jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have accused Google and Apple of capitulating to Kremlin pressure after the two tech companies deleted his tactical voting app from their online stores.
Both companies had come under significant pressure from Russian regulators in the days before the courntry’s parliamentary elections to block access to Navalny’s Smart Voting initiative, which tries to channel opposition votes toward the strongest opponents of the ruling party, United Russia.
Continue reading...New efforts will let vast amounts of false material slip through the cracks, according to climate advocates
Facebook has announced new efforts to combat climate crisis misinformation on its platform, including by expanding its climate science center to provide more reliable information, investing in organizations that fight misinformation, and launching a video series to highlight young climate advocates on Facebook and Instagram.
But critics say the new push, announced on Thursday, falls short and will allow vast amounts of climate misinformation to slip through the cracks.
Continue reading...Minister reveals plans to change laws inherited from EU, with rules on medical devices also in crosshairs
Rules on genetically modified farming, medical devices and vehicle standards will be top of a bonfire of laws inherited from the EU as the government seeks to change legislation automatically transferred to the UK after Brexit.
Thousands of laws and regulations are to be reviewed, modified or repealed under a new programme aimed at cementing the UK’s independence and “Brexit opportunities”, David Frost has announced.
Continue reading...Adverts promoting ‘dangerous, unproven and unethical’ procedure shown millions of times, study finds
Facebook has served “abortion reversal” adverts 18.4m times since January 2020, according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), promoting an “unproven, unethical” and “dangerous” procedure.
Google shows the adverts on more than four-fifths of searches related to abortion across a number of US cities, according to the CCDH research, targeted at search terms such as “unwanted pregnancy” and “abortion pill”.
Continue reading...Decades-old video game consoles such as Atari 2600, Mega Drive and NES are seeing a wave of new games released on old-school cartridges. Who’s making them, and why?
This year, veteran video game developers Garry Kitchen and David Crane released a new game for the Atari 2600 – despite the fact that the console was discontinued some 30 years ago. And they’re not the only ones. Companies such as Limited Run Games and Strictly Limited Games are manufacturing brand new cartridges, and sometimes never-before-released games, for consoles that predate the smartphone. “The market’s not remotely dead for these consoles,” says Josh Fairhurst, head of North Carolina-based Limited Run. “There’s a lot of demand, and it’s only growing.”
Prices for retro games have gone through the roof in recent years, as evidenced by a recent slew of record-breaking auction bids for classic titles, including the sale of a mint copy of Super Mario 64 for $1.5m (£1.1m). The supply of old games is limited, and demand is increasing: not just from older people who want to collect games they remember from their youth, but also from those who weren’t even born when the Sega Mega Drive was cutting-edge. “New generations want to go back and experience the classics and own them,” says Fairhurst. “There are game collectors born every day.”
Continue reading...Three former US intelligence operatives accused of helping UAE spy on enemies
Three former US intelligence operatives, who went to work as mercenary hackers for the United Arab Emirates, are facing federal charges of conspiring to violate hacking laws, according to justice department court documents filed on Tuesday.
The three men, Marc Baier, Ryan Adams, and Daniel Gericke, are accused of having been part of a clandestine unit named Project Raven, first reported by Reuters, that helped the United Arab Emirates spy on its enemies.
Continue reading...Social media firm reportedly kept own research secret that suggests app worsens body image issues
Facebook has kept internal research secret for two years that suggests its Instagram app makes body image issues worse for teenage girls, according to a leak from the tech firm.
Since at least 2019, staff at the company have been studying the impact of their product on its younger users’ states of mind. Their research has repeatedly found it is harmful for a large proportion, and particularly teenage girls.
Continue reading...Cressida Dick calls for more action to stop online radicalisation and questions push towards end-to-end encryption
The UK most senior police officer has accused technology firms of failing to identify, monitor and report the activity of terrorists, in a plea for improved access to social media platforms.
Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, also questioned the push to expand end-to-end encryption in a speech to law enforcement officials on Monday.
Continue reading...The New Democratic party’s leader is riding high in the polls – and could be the kingmaker in next week’s election
He’s the most-liked national political leader in Canada, wears sharply tailored suits, has graced the pages of a men’s fashion magazine and is followed by starstruck fans on social media. And he’s not Justin Trudeau.
With Canada heading to the polls after a snap election controversially called by Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh, leader of the progressive New Democratic party (NDP), has quickly emerged as the most affable politician in Canada – and a powerful figure who is unlikely to become prime minister.
Continue reading...Suspended union rep calls on social media giant to intervene after exhausted workers complain of extra workload
Facebook’s facilities management firm has demanded the removal of a union activist leading a campaign against “impossible workloads” imposed on exhausted cleaners at the US tech giant’s London offices.
Emails seen by the Observer show JLL @ Facebook, which manages the social media firm’s London sites, asked Churchill Group, which employs the cleaners, to remove the workers’ elected union rep, Guillermo Camacho, from Facebook’s offices after he helped organise protests against a doubling of cleaning duties in July.
Continue reading...The iPhone maker may be set to break market records, but it’s starting to look more and more like a one-gadget pony
If Apple is to become the world’s first three-trillion-dollar company, the iPhone will play a key role in that feat. The tech firm unveils the latest iteration of its signature product on Tuesday, and the success of the iPhone 13 will determine how quickly Apple goes from its current market capitalisation of just under $2.5tn (£1.8tn) to $3tn.
“We believe Apple is on a trajectory to hit $3tn by early 2022 and the iPhone 13 will be a lynchpin of growth,” says Dan Ives of investment firm Wedbush Securities.
Continue reading...Billed as the most secure phone on the planet, An0m became a viral sensation in the underworld. There was just one problem for anyone using it for criminal means: it was run by the police
The rain pattered lightly on the harbour of the Belgian port city of Ghent when, on 21 June 2021, a team of professional divers slipped below the surface into the emerald murk. The Brazilian tanker, heavy with fruit juice bound for Australia, had already crossed the Atlantic Ocean, but its journey wasn’t halfway done as the divers felt their way along the barnacled serration of its hull. They were looking for the sea chest, a metallic inlet below the water line, through which the ship draws seawater to cool its engines. Tucked inside, they found what they were looking for: three long sacks, each wrapped in a thick black plastic bag and trussed with black and white striped nautical rope.
The sacks were heavy. Each one weighed as much as a sheep and, shaped like a body bag, could feasibly have contained one. As the Belgian police opened the first bag, a stack of crimson bricks slid out. Had this cargo reached Australia, where high demand and meagre supply has pushed the price of a kilo of cocaine to eight times its equivalent cost in North America, the haul would have been worth more than A$64m (£34m).
Continue reading...Sergei Ryabkov’s claim of interference in Duma vote believed to be reference to anti-Putin apps on Apple and Google
The Russian foreign ministry has summoned the US ambassador, John Sullivan, to complain about alleged interference by “American digital giants” in Russia’s upcoming parliamentary election.
According to a ministry statement on Friday, the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, claimed Russia “possesses irrefutable evidence of the violation of Russian legislation by American digital giants in the context of the preparation and conduct of elections to the state Duma”.
Continue reading...Documents show company dragged feet to correct disparity after learning it was failing to comply with laws in UK, Europe and Asia
Google has been illegally underpaying thousands of temporary workers in dozens of countries and delayed correcting the pay rates for more than two years as it attempted to cover up the problem, the Guardian can reveal.
Google executives have been aware since at least May 2019 that the company was failing to comply with local laws in the UK, Europe and Asia that mandate temporary workers be paid equal rates to full-time employees performing similar work, internal Google documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian show.
Continue reading...Vast range of new regulations prompt fears of a return to tight social control of pre-reform days
On the second floor of a nondescript concrete building in north-east Beijing, the Youyou internet cafe is less than half full. Quiet and dark, the cafe’s customers are all adults, sitting in brown sofas in front of screens set up for hours of comfortable online gaming.
Minors aren’t allowed in, and a poster on the glass entrance reads: “The whole society together cares about the healthy growth of underage teens.” Under new regulations from the Chinese government, minors are limited to just a few hours of gaming a week, with tech platforms ordered to enforce it. The intervention is just one of a recent rush of directives from Beijing aimed at reshaping society.
Continue reading...Site was removed from GoDaddy before being censored by new host Epik, known for providing services to far-right groups
Troubles are mounting for a Texas website used to report violators of the state’s extreme anti-abortion legislation after the site was forced offline by two different web hosting platforms.
The site ProLifeWhistleblower.com was removed from its original web host by the provider GoDaddy on Friday before being suspended by its new host, an agency known for providing services to far-right groups.
Continue reading...Police claim plans for end-to-end encryption will stop officers being able to access ‘incisive intelligence’
Facebook’s plans to allow encrypted messaging across all its platforms could prevent the detection of up to 20m child abuse images every year, a senior investigating officer has claimed.
Rob Jones, the director of threat leadership at the National Crime Agency, said the social media company’s goal of rolling out end-to-end encryption will stop officers from accessing “incisive intelligence” that allows them to rescue abused children.
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