Category Archives: Computing

Infosys to ‘urgently’ shut Moscow office as pressure grows on Rishi Sunak

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Chancellor’s wife, Akshata Murthy, has £690m stake in Indian IT firm, which is now moving staff out of Russia

Indian IT services company Infosys, in which the chancellor Rishi Sunak’s wife owns an estimated £690m stake and collects about £11.5m in annual dividends, is “urgently” closing its office in Russia.

Infosys’s decision to shut its Moscow office comes as pressure mounts on Sunak to answer accusations that his family is collecting “blood money” dividends from the firm’s continued operation in Russia despite the invasion of Ukraine.

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Spawn of Wordle: five of the best riffs on the hit word game

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Josh Wardle’s viral puzzle game has inspired a horde of imitators, based on anything from geography to Taylor Swift fandom

First Wordle was a grassroots hit that went viral, then the the online word puzzle was bought by the New York Times for a seven-figure sum, and now it has spawned legions of imitators.

From Nerdle to Worldle, the simple format has been copied in dozens of new ways in recent weeks, sometimes to satisfy urges unfulfilled by the original, such as the opportunity to play more than once a day, but also to step up the challenge, profit from online advertising, or tap into niche interests.

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Mark Zuckerberg says Meta is building the world’s fastest supercomputer

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Facebook founder’s planned metaverse, blending reality with digital experiences, will require enormous computing power

Mark Zuckerberg has announced his social media empire is building what he claims is the world’s fastest artificial intelligence supercomputer as part of plans to build a virtual metaverse.

The Facebook founder said in a blogpost that the metaverse, a concept that blends the physical and digital world via virtual and augmented reality, will require “enormous” computing power. The AI supercomputer, dubbed AI Research SuperCluster (RSC) by Zuckerberg’s Meta business, is already the fifth fastest in the world, the company said.

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Nasdaq braces for nervy fortnight as investors fall out of love with tech

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Technology stocks have been tumbling in the new year; now all eyes are on the sector’s giants as they report results

Tech stocks have been nursing a new year hangover, pushing the Nasdaq into correction territory. Momentum is building against companies with exciting promises to reshape the world, as investors turn to “value” alternatives such as oil and banking.

The tech sector now faces a crunch fortnight as its biggest names report results, including Microsoft on Tuesday, Tesla on Wednesday and Apple on Thursday. They must prove they can thrive in a post-lockdown world where the cost-of-living squeeze is leaving people with less money for tech products and services.

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Monopoly money: is Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard good for gaming?

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The company’s bottomless appetite for buying new studios means the art of the deal is threatening the art – and heart – of the game

In 2014, Microsoft bought Minecraft’s developer Mojang for what seemed, at the time, an eye-popping figure: $2.5bn (£1.8bn). It was the first in a series of bullish video-game studio acquisitions by the tech giant, whose games division has been led by executive Phil Spencer, a long-time advocate for video games within Microsoft and the wider business world, for the past eight years. More studios followed, for undisclosed amounts: beloved Californian comedy-game artists Double Fine, UK studio Ninja Theory, RPG specialists Obsidian Entertainment. It seemed that under Spencer’s leadership, Microsoft was cementing its commitment to the Xbox console and the video-games business by investing in what makes games great: the people who make them.

Then came 2020’s deal to acquire Zenimax (and with it Bethesda), for a properly astonishing $7.5bn. This was different. This wasn’t the Xbox division acquiring studios to make games for its consoles. This was an entire publisher, with several different studios and a whole portfolio of popular game series. At this point Microsoft’s spending started to look like a monopoly move – a bid to sew up the market by closing off hugely popular games behind Microsoft’s own consoles and services. When it was confirmed that Bethesda’s forthcoming games, including this year’s space role-playing epic Starfield and the next fantasy Elder Scrolls game, would be exclusive to Xbox and Microsoft Game Pass, I started to wonder whether Microsoft’s stated aim to make video games more widely available to everyone was lining up with its actions in the market.

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Microsoft’s Activision plan shows gaming will be at heart of metaverse

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Activision Blizzard deal would help Xbox compete against PlayStation – but will regulators play along?

Microsoft’s planned takeover of Activision Blizzard puts the tech company at the centre of two big issues facing the sector: the metaverse and Washington’s determination to rein in big tech.

The metaverse is where the physical and digital worlds come together, although it is very much at the concept stage. The idea is that you will put on a virtual reality headset and a digital representation of yourself – an avatar – will interact with others at work and play in a combination of virtual and augmented reality.

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Ukraine says evidence points to Russia being behind cyber-attack

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Claim comes as Microsoft warns hack that hit government websites could be worse than first feared

Ukraine has said it has “evidence” Russia was behind a massive cyber-attack that knocked out key government websites last week, while Microsoft warned the hack could be far worse than first thought.

Tensions are at an all-time high between Ukraine and Russia, which Kyiv accuses of having massed troops on its border before a possible invasion. Some analysts fear the cyber-attack could be the prelude to a military attack.

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The trouble with Roblox, the video game empire built on child labour

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Young developers on the platform used by many millions of children claim they have been financially exploited, threatened with dismissal and sexually harassed

Anna* was 10 when she built her first video game on Roblox, a digital platform where young people can make, share and play games together. She used Roblox much like a child from a previous generation might have used cardboard boxes, marker pens and stuffed toys to build a castle or a spaceship and fill it with characters and story. There was one alluring difference: Roblox hosted Anna’s tiny world online, enabling children she had never met and who maybe lived thousands of miles away from her home in Utah to visit and play. Using Roblox’s in-built tools – child-friendly versions of professional software – Anna began to learn the rudiments of music composition, computer programming and 3D modelling. Game-making became an obsession. When she wasn’t at school Anna was rarely off her computer.

As she became more proficient, Anna’s work caught the attention of some experienced users on Roblox, game-makers in their 20s who messaged her with a proposition to collaborate on a more ambitious project. Flattered by their interest, Anna became the fifth member of the nascent team, contributing art, design and programming to the game. She did not sign up to make money, but during a Skype call the game-makers offered the teenager 10% of any profits the game made in the future. It turned out to be a generous offer. Within a few months, the game had become one of the most played on Roblox. For Anna, success had an unfathomable, life-changing impact. At 16 her monthly income somehow exceeded her parents’ combined salaries. She calculated that she was on course to earn $300,000 in a year, a salary equivalent to that of a highly experienced Google programmer. Anna cancelled her plans to go to college.

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Are we witnessing the dawn of post-theory science?

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Does the advent of machine learning mean the classic methodology of hypothesise, predict and test has had its day?

Isaac Newton apocryphally discovered his second law – the one about gravity – after an apple fell on his head. Much experimentation and data analysis later, he realised there was a fundamental relationship between force, mass and acceleration. He formulated a theory to describe that relationship – one that could be expressed as an equation, F=ma – and used it to predict the behaviour of objects other than apples. His predictions turned out to be right (if not always precise enough for those who came later).

Contrast how science is increasingly done today. Facebook’s machine learning tools predict your preferences better than any psychologist. AlphaFold, a program built by DeepMind, has produced the most accurate predictions yet of protein structures based on the amino acids they contain. Both are completely silent on why they work: why you prefer this or that information; why this sequence generates that structure.

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Apple becomes first US company to reach $3tn valuation

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New year trading pushed Apple shares to a new high of $182.80 after tripling in value in under four years

Apple became the first US company to be valued at over $3tn on Monday as the tech company continued its phenomenal share price growth, tripling in value in under four years.

A pandemic-era surge in tech stocks has driven the major US tech companies to new highs, pulling US stock markets with them. Apple became the world’s first trillion dollar company in August 2018, passed $2tn in 2020 and hit its new high as trading began after the holidays and its shares passed $182.80 a piece before dipping lower to end the day valued at over $2.9tn.

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Recently uncovered software flaw ‘most critical vulnerability of the last decade’

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Log4Shell grants easy access to internal networks, making them susceptible to data loot and loss and malware attacks

A critical vulnerability in a widely used software tool – one quickly exploited in the online game Minecraft – is rapidly emerging as a major threat to organizations around the world.

“The internet’s on fire right now,” said Adam Meyers, senior vice-president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. “People are scrambling to patch”, he said, “and all kinds of people scrambling to exploit it.” He said on Friday morning that in the 12 hours since the bug’s existence was disclosed, it had been “fully weaponized”, meaning malefactors had developed and distributed tools to exploit it.

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Fortress Europe: the millions spent on military-grade tech to deter refugees

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We map out the rising number of high-tech surveillance and deterrent systems facing asylum seekers along EU borders

From military-grade drones to sensor systems and experimental technology, the EU and its members have spent hundreds of millions of euros over the past decade on technologies to track down and keep at bay the refugees on its borders.

Poland’s border with Belarus is becoming the latest frontline for this technology, with the country approving last month a €350m (£300m) wall with advanced cameras and motion sensors.

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14in MacBook Pro review: putting power back in Apple’s laptop

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New M1 Pro and Max chips, larger screen, long battery life and more ports make for huge upgrade

Apple’s MacBook Pro has been given its biggest upgrade in power, ports and screen quality since 2016, ticking almost every box on the wishlist of eager Mac users.

But the new 14in and 16in models are no longer machines for the average consumer. Costing from £1,899 ($1,999 or A$2,999) they are workstation laptops for creative pros and developers and priced accordingly. They leave the excellent £999 M1 MacBook Air as Apple’s foremost consumer laptop.

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The 20 best gadgets of 2021

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From smartphones to folding skis, the year’s top gizmos selected by tech experts from the Guardian, iNews, TechRadar and Wired

Cutting-edge tech is often super-expensive, difficult to use and less than slick. Not so for Samsung’s latest folding screen phones. The Z Fold 3 tablet-phone hybrid and Z Flip 3 flip-phone reinventions are smooth, slick and even water-resistant, packing big screens in compact bodies. The Fold might be super-expensive still, but the Flip 3 costs about the same as a regular top smartphone, but is far, far more interesting. Samuel Gibbs

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Controversial Pegasus spyware faces its day of reckoning | John Naughton

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The infamous hacking tool is now at the centre of international lawsuits thanks to a courageous research lab

If you were compiling a list of the most toxic tech companies, Facebook – strangely – would not come out on top. First place belongs to NSO, an outfit of which most people have probably never heard. Wikipedia tells us that “NSO Group is an Israeli technology firm primarily known for its proprietary spyware Pegasus, which is capable of remote zero-click surveillance of smartphones”.

Pause for a moment on that phrase: “remote zero-click surveillance of smartphones”. Most smartphone users assume that the ability of a hacker to penetrate their device relies upon the user doing something careless or naive – clicking on a weblink, or opening an attachment. And in most cases they would be right in that assumption. But Pegasus can get in without the user doing anything untoward. And once in, it turns everything on the device into an open book for whoever deployed the malware.

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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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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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‘Yeah, we’re spooked’: AI starting to have big real-world impact, says expert

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Prof Stuart Russell says field of artificial intelligence needs to grow up quickly to ensure humans remain in control

A scientist who wrote a leading textbook on artificial intelligence has said experts are “spooked” by their own success in the field, comparing the advance of AI to the development of the atom bomb.

Prof Stuart Russell, the founder of the Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley, said most experts believed that machines more intelligent than humans would be developed this century, and he called for international treaties to regulate the development of the technology.

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Why people believe Covid conspiracy theories: could folklore hold the answer?

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Researchers use AI – and witchcraft folklore – to map the coronavirus conspiracy theories that have sprung up

Researchers have mapped the web of connections underpinning coronavirus conspiracy theories, opening a new way of understanding and challenging them.

Using Danish witchcraft folklore as a model, the researchers from UCLA and Berkeley analysed thousands of social media posts with an artificial intelligence tool and extracted the key people, things and relationships.

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Apple’s plan to scan for child abuse images ‘tears at heart of privacy’

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Security experts say technology on iPhones could open door to mass surveillance and be misused

Technology like that proposed by Apple to search iPhones for child sexual abuse images would open the door to mass surveillance and be vulnerable to exploitation, world-leading security and cryptography experts have said.

Client-side scanning (CSS) gives access to data on users’ devices, including stored data, which “brings surveillance to a new level”, according to analysis from academics at Harvard Kennedy school, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Cambridge, among others.

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