Benyamin Ahmed’s Weird Whales sell in cryptocurrency and ownership is stored on blockchain
A 12-year-old boy had made about £290,000 after creating digital pictures of whales and selling tokens of their ownership which are stored on blockchain.
Benyamin Ahmed’s collection of pixelated artworks called Weird Whales went viral during the school holidays. His success may be a harbinger of the digital business models that could disrupt the banking sector.
Continue reading...U-turn comes after resolution of issues with payment processors, says chief executive of user-generated adult content site
OnlyFans, the user-generated adult content site, is reversing course on plans to ban “sexually explicit” content after securing agreement with its payment processors, it has announced.
Last week, OnlyFans said it would ban adult material from 1 October, to the dismay of its users and creators, who argued that doing so risked driving such work underground.
Continue reading...From accidentally over ordering, to products that bear no resemblance to their description or photographs, buying everything online has its downsides
When Sam Bowker and his partner moved into their new rental, they planned to buy a couch the same way they usually did – with a trip down to the local op-shop.
But Covid-19 scuppered this. The Salvation Army was no longer offering delivery services, so after a couple of drinks one evening, Bowker turned to eBay. There he found a “sleek looking black three seater lounge – it was a flatpack you build yourself, with free shipping”.
Continue reading...Activists say website’s change will threaten livelihoods and force those working remotely online into ‘riskier street-based sex work’
American sex workers say subscription website OnlyFans’ decision to ban “sexually explicit” content will threaten their livelihoods, drive more of the industry underground, and ultimately endanger lives.
Related: OnlyFans to ban adult material after pressure from payment processors
Continue reading...Sinead Stubbins is the first to admit she might know a bit too much about the British personality. Is it creepy? Maybe. Maybe not? Who knows
• Internet Wormhole is a new column where Guardian Australia writers take you on a tour of their online obsession. Click here for more
Last year, I spent a lot of time staring intently into a computer screen at a person who does not know I exist. Let’s just say if restraining orders were determined by hours spent watching someone’s YouTube channel, British model, designer and TV presenter Alexa Chung would have a pretty decent case against me.
Alexa Chung’s YouTube channel started in 2018 with sporadic videos promoting her clothing label and for the last couple of years has included tutorials (for makeup, skincare and how to dress), field trips to fashion shows and interviews with other glamorous, tousled hair women in which they give advice about dating or sleeping or throwing dinner parties from their tranquil, presumably-Santal 33-scented apartments.
Continue reading...Show has been shot in New Zealand so far but filming will move to UK from June 2022
Amazon has made the surprise decision to move production of its $1bn-plus Lord of the Rings series from New Zealand to the UK, rejecting tens of millions of dollars in incentives to shoot the TV show in the same location as the blockbuster films.
Amazon, which four years ago paid $250m to secure the TV rights to JRR Tolkien’s works after founder Jeff Bezos demanded a Game of Thrones-style hit for its streaming service, chose to film the first series in New Zealand after competitive bids from around the world.
Continue reading...Social media brought me better jobs, close friends and love. But I was ignoring the ways in which the constant criticism and approval were shaping my life
In March 2009, I type in “twitter.com” and sign up for the next 12 years of my life. I am 20, in my first year of uni. I have three friends and hate it here. But, on Twitter, I can talk to real music journalists, my longed-for future people. Two years later, I move to London to work at NME. My social awkwardness makes life in a new city feel like dredging the Thames with baggy tights. On Twitter, however, I have blossomed into a magnificent little chaos magnet. Even on sad, drunk Friday nights in, my phone-sized kingdom glitters.
Real life improved, often thanks to Twitter. It led me to John, still my boyfriend 10 years on, and many of my closest friends. Thanks to being a woman in a male-dominated field, the odd viral review and little talent for discretion, I ended up with 60,000 followers. I didn’t take it that seriously, but acing my first popularity contest felt like winning Miss World, if she had bad posture and trigger-happy thumbs. Visibility brought better jobs and gave me a platform to retaliate against music’s many dirtbags. The mute button silenced reply guys and trolls, and I hadn’t searched my name in years, ever since John likened that always-upsetting habit to self-harm – an overstatement that nevertheless rang true.
Continue reading...After Havana shut down online access for 72 hours, the battle is on to keep the country connected
Cubans used to joke about Napoleon Bonaparte chatting to Mikhail Gorbachev, George W Bush and Fidel Castro in the afterlife. “If I’d have had your prudence, I’d never have fought Waterloo,” the French emperor tells the last Soviet leader. “If I’d have had your military might, I’d have won Waterloo,” he tells the Texan. Turning last to Castro, the emperor says: “If I’d have had Granma [the Cuban Communist party daily], I’d have lost Waterloo but nobody would have known.”
The joke no longer does the rounds. With millions of Cubans now online, the state’s monopoly on mass communication has been deeply eroded. But after social media helped catalyse historic protests on the island last month, the government temporarily shut the internet down.
Continue reading...Secretive gangs are hacking the computers of governments, firms, even hospitals, and demanding huge sums. But if we pay these ransoms, are we creating a ticking time bomb?
They have the sort of names that only teenage boys or aspiring Bond villains would dream up (REvil, Grief, Wizard Spider, Ragnar), they base themselves in countries that do not cooperate with international law enforcement and they don’t care whether they attack a hospital or a multinational corporation. Ransomware gangs are suddenly everywhere, seemingly unstoppable – and very successful.
In June, meat producer JBS, which supplies over a fifth of all the beef in the US, paid a £7.8m ransom to regain access to its computer systems. The same month, the US’s largest national fuel pipeline, Colonial Pipeline, paid £3.1m to ransomware hackers after they locked the company’s systems, causing days of fuel shortages and paralysing the east coast. “It was the hardest decision I’ve made in my 39 years in the energy industry,” said a deflated-looking Colonial CEO Joseph Blount in an evidence session before Congress. In July, hackers attacked software firm Kaseya, demanding £50m. As a result, hundreds of supermarkets had to close in Sweden, because their cash registers didn’t work.
Continue reading...As big spenders such as Amazon and Spotify fill our ears with more commercial, celebrity-driven fare, can grassroots, diverse shows survive?
The British Podcast Awards were different this year. Held in a south London park, they had a boutique festival feel, with wristbands and tokens for drinks, an open-sided tent for the actual awards, and people lounging on blankets in front of the stage. There were also sponsor areas – those small, picket-fenced areas where invitees could drink and mix with brand bigwigs. Awards are expensive to stage, and to give any sort of a professional sheen, money is needed. In 2017, the BPA sponsors included Radioplayer and Whistledown, an independent audio creator. In 2021, the BPA was “powered by Amazon Music”. Spotify, Stitcher, Audible, Acast, Global, BBC Sounds, Podfollow and Sony Music also dipped into their sponsorship pockets. Clearly, podcasting has gone up in the world.
Over the past 18 months, podcasting has hit the corporate big time. Apple, long the most recognisable name in podcasting, its iTunes chart being the public measure of any show’s success, is attempting, clumsily, to move from being a neutral platform that hosts shows into one that makes money from podcasting (by, for example, charging creators for highlighted spots).
Continue reading...Boss’s Twitter rant against Uber Eats risks backfiring, as experts warn online outbursts can damage companies’ reputation
Chief executives are being warned to “think twice before they tweet” after the boss of takeaway company Just Eat Takeaway was told his Twitter spat with Uber threatened to undermine the firm’s reputation.
Jitse Groen this week became the latest in a growing list of chief executives to be rebuked by customers, investors and even regulators over ill-judged tweets.
Continue reading...CCDH finds ‘disinformation dozen’ have combined following of 59 million people across multiple social media platforms
The vast majority of Covid-19 anti-vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories originated from just 12 people, a report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) cited by the White House this week found.
Related: ‘They’re killing people’: Biden slams Facebook for Covid disinformation
Continue reading...Analysis: Twitter, Facebook and others condemn hateful speech, so why is it so easy to find on their sites?
The world’s biggest social networks say racism isn’t welcome on their platforms, but a combination of poor enforcement and weak rules have allowed hate to flourish.
In the hours after England’s loss to Italy in the European Football Championship, both Twitter and Facebook, which owns Instagram, issued statements condemning the swelling racist abuse.
Continue reading...Joe Biden’s hour-long phone call with the Russian leader suggests growing impatience over attacks disrupting US sectors
Joe Biden has increased pressure on Vladimir Putin to move against ransomware groups operating from Russia, warning the United States is prepared to respond if cyberhacks are not stopped.
The two leaders held an hour-long phone call on Friday, their first since they discussed ransomware attacks at a summit in Geneva on 16 June. Biden’s message to Putin in the call was direct, suggesting a growing impatience over attacks that have disrupted key US sectors.
Continue reading...President addresses hack of Kaseya software that has affected hundreds of US businesses and shut down Swedish shops
Joe Biden said on Saturday he had directed US intelligence agencies to investigate a sophisticated ransomware attack that hit hundreds of American businesses as the Fourth of July holiday weekend began and aroused suspicions of Russian gang involvement.
Related: Joe Biden cherry-picks audience to promote bipartisan infrastructure deal
Continue reading...Exclusive: Finding raises questions for security services weeks after similar revelations about PM’s number
The private mobile number of Dominic Raab, the UK foreign secretary, has been online for at least 11 years, raising questions for the security services weeks after the prime minister’s number was also revealed to be accessible to anyone.
Raab’s number was discovered by a Guardian reader using a Google search. It appears to have been online since before he became an MP in 2010, and remained after he became foreign secretary and first secretary of state – de facto deputy prime minister – in 2019.
Continue reading...Once, people who owned viral photos made little money from them. Now, the ‘original’ can potentially sell for an enormous sum. But are buyers savvy investors – or unwitting dupes?
The photographer Jeff McCurry’s favourite Harambe memes are the ones where the dead gorilla is in heaven, Photoshopped alongside Diana, Princess of Wales, Tupac and Muhammad Ali. “It’s like: wow,” says McCurry. “What greater spot can you be placed in? Harambe’s at the top of the hill, waiting to meet you there.”
McCurry took the photograph of the 17-year-old western lowland gorilla that went on to become a meme. In it, Harambe kneels, projecting a fearsome aura of strength, nobility and calm. A former volunteer photographer at Cincinnati zoo, McCurry was there on 28 May 2016, the fateful day a three-year-old boy climbed into the gorilla’s enclosure, forcing zookeepers to shoot Harambe dead. “It didn’t seem real at first,” says McCurry, who was a regular visitor to the zoo. “When any of your friends die, it’s hard to process. I was in shock.”
Continue reading...After being laid off during Covid, my dad set his heart on a job at Costco. I told Twitter about it – cue a social media explosion
Nearly a year after he’d been laid off because of Covid, my dad – a jubilant, always-smiling, 58-year-old Michigander best known for befriending everyone he meets – told me he wanted to go back to work.
Specifically, he wanted to work at Costco.
Continue reading...GCHQ cybersecurity boss sounds alarm over extortion by hackers who are mostly based in former Soviet states
Ransomware represents the biggest threat to online security for most people and businesses in the UK, the head of GCHQ’s cybersecurity arm is to warn.
Lindy Cameron, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, will say in a speech that the phenomenon, where hackers encrypt data and demand payment for it to be restored, is escalating and becoming increasingly professionalised.
Continue reading...Brazil-based giant paid ransom in bitcoin after ransomware attack shut down operations across world
JBS, the world’s biggest meat processor, has paid an $11m (£7.8m) ransom after a cyber attack shut down operations, including abattoirs in the US, Australia and Canada.
While most of its operations have been restored, the Brazilian-headquartered company said it hoped the payment would head off any further complications including data theft.
Continue reading...