List of All Articles with Tag 'tech'

The chief executive of US software firm SolarWinds told employees Friday that "we intend to vigorously defend ourselves" in the face of potential legal action from US regulators over the firm's handling of a sweeping 2020 breach by alleged Russian hackers, according to an internal SolarWinds email obtained by CNN.

A Microsoft Corp. executive vowed in court that after the company’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc.

Nvidia Corp., the world’s most valuable chipmaker, is “extremely likely” to invest in Europe, Chief Executive Officer Jensen

International Business Machines Corp. is nearing a deal to buy software company Apptio for roughly $5 billion, part

By Sudip Kar-Gupta BRUSSELS Belgium's FSMA regulator on Friday ordered Binance to cease offering any virtual currency services

A top European Union official is touring Silicon Valley this week and reminding tech platforms including Twitter and Facebook-parent Meta about their content moderation obligations, just weeks ahead of a deadline to comply with sweeping new EU laws that will apply to large social media platforms.

After staging a widespread blackout to protest Reddit's plans for a controversial new pricing policy, some users are now trying a different tactic: flooding the social network with John Oliver pictures.

Twitter trolls who suggested a ship carrying the first wave of the Windrush generation should have “sunk” have been taken down following public criticism. On June 22, 1948, HMT Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury in Essex with around 500 workers aboard from Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. They were among the first of the Windrush generation – people who had travelled to the UK between 1948 and 1971 from Caribbean countries as part of a scheme to help fill post-war labour shortages. On 75th anniversary of Windrush, Sunder Katwala, director of independent think tank British Future, told the PA news agency about a series of offensive tweets. One anonymous user with a profile image of a St George’s flag had suggested that the then-prime minister Clement Attlee “should have told the Royal Navy to sink it in the middle of the Atlantic”. The user had also argued that black and Jewish people could not be British. Initially, complaints about the account were rejected – despite MPs receiving assurances in the past that such comments probably violated Twitter rules. Mr Katwala was tagged in a further tweet by another user, which stated: “Should have sunk it just as we should be sinking the illegals coming to our shores.” He had reported that offensive post too, but on Thursday had yet to receive a response from moderators. PA had attempted to contact Twitter on Thursday for a comment. By Friday afternoon, both accounts appeared to have been removed or suspended from the micro-blogging site. Mr Katwala said: “It is good that the right decision has been made in this case after the indefensible decision to declare this incessant racism within the rules was challenged publicly. “My concern is that the Twitter moderation system is invariably getting the most clear cut cases wrong so users are not getting the protection they need most of the time.” Previously, the author and prominent social commentator had said that public figures including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, ministers and MPs “face daily racism because of the failures of social media platforms”. “So you can’t participate in public space on equal terms without experiencing racism, even though in every other sphere of life, if you’re on the train, on the bus, or in the playground, or in business, people can’t do that anymore, because we have social norms and we uphold them. “There’s no enforcement at all of the most basic social norms even when put in the most vitriolic terms,” he said. Allowing the views of a tiny minority to be amplified on social media skewed how the younger generation saw progress in the real world, leaving an impression society was “going backwards, no forwards”, he suggested. Mr Katwala had said social media does have the ability to “step up” to tackle online hate, as happened after the Christchurch terror attack in New Zealand and after Euro 2020 racist abuse. But he added on Thursday: “It is very clear to me that Twitter is now taking the most extreme content considerably less seriously than two years ago. “How far that is a policy decision under new ownership and how far a reduction in staff capacity is less clear. “The type of very extreme content they would take down when challenged is much more likely to stay up for much longer now. If the platform is not going to act, the case for external regulation gets stronger.” Mr Katwala has recently published a new book, How To Be A Patriot, which is a personal account of what it is to be British. He joined a celebration of the 75th anniversary at the National Windrush Monument in Waterloo, south London, and at a special service at Southwark Cathedral. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Meta rejects accusation of censorship of language around female body AI developing faster than laws aiming to regulate it, academic warns Facebook Marketplace is most complained-about online retail platforms

Public interest in the deep ocean went into a frenzy this week as the search for the doomed Titan submarine played out – and Oscar-winning film director has made no secret of the fact that he is obsessed with the subject. Since it emerged on 22 June that the Titan was destroyed in what US authorities called a “catastrophic implosion”, Cameron has been telling media outlets that he knew what the five-man crew’s fate was since Monday, four days earlier. After calling up his “contacts in the deep submersible community” Cameron said he had already ascertained that the vessel had been destroyed in an implosion. “I felt in my bones what had happened.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter But why does Cameron know so much about the ocean depths? Titanic, Avatar and The Abyss First of all, Cameron has made a lot of films about the bottom of the sea. His 1997 film, Titanic, won 11 Oscars and was the first movie to earn more than $1bn worldwide, and Cameron went deep on his research – literally. The filmmaker has visited the real-life wreck of the Titanic 33 times, making his first trip in 1995 to shoot footage for the film. One of those dives even involved getting trapped with the wreck for 16 hours, with currents of water holding the director’s submarine at the bottom of the ocean. He has even written a book about his experiences, Exploring The Deep, which includes details of his dive journey, photos and maps from his own explorations of the wreck. He told ABC News: “I actually calculated [that] I've spent more time on the ship than the captain did back in the day.” Long before Titanic, Cameron directed The Abyss in 1989. The premise of the film is that an American submarine sinks in the Caribbean – sound familiar? That prompts a search and recovery team to race against Soviet vessels to recover the boat. Meanwhile, the last movie in Cameron’s famous Avatar franchise, The Way of Water, is set on the aquatic ecosystems of a world 25 trillion miles from Earth. "Some people think of me as a Hollywood guy … (but) I make 'Avatar' to make money to do explorations," Cameron told The Telegraph. Going even deeper In 2012, Cameron went a step further, plunging nearly 11km down to the deepest place in the ocean, the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific. The filmmaker made the solo descent in a submarine called the Deepsea Challenger, and it took more than two hours to reach the bottom. The submarine he used was years in the making, designed by Cameron himself with a team of engineers. The trip was only the second manned expedition to the Mariana Trench. The first was in 1960, when US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and Swiss scientist Jacques Piccard descended to the ocean floor. “It was absolutely the most remote, isolated place on the planet,” Cameron said in a later interview. “I really feel like in one day I've been to another planet and come back.” He was even underwater when 9/11 happened His obsession with the ocean goes back to age 17, he told the New York Times, when he learned to scuba dive, when he said he felt like he had discovered the "keys to another world”. And between making Titanic in 1997 and Avatar in 2009 Cameron didn’t make a feature film. But he did make documentaries about sea exploration. One of those, 2003’s Ghosts of the Abyss, showed Cameron's travels to the Titanic, while the other, 2005’s Aliens of the Deep, saw Cameron team up with NASA scientists to explore the sea creatures of mid-ocean ridges. Cameron’s fascination even meant he was inside a submersible vessel exploring the Titanic on 11 September 2001, when terrorists flew two passenger jets into the World Trade Centre. It was only after the now-68-year-old director and his crew finished their expedition and returned to the main ship that Cameron learned what had happened. “What is this thing that’s going on?” Cameron asked the late actor Bill Paxton, who played treasure hunter Brock Lovett in the film. “The worst terrorist attack in history, Jim,” Paxton said. Cameron realised he “was presumably the last man in the Western Hemisphere to learn about what had happened,” he told Spiegel in 2012. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Police in the UK have blamed an Android smartphone update on a record increase in accidental 999 calls. The National Police Chiefs Council said the Emergency SOS function was resulting in emergency switchboards being overwhelmed by “silent” calls. The emergency feature is activated when a side button on a device is repeatedly pressed, which triggers a countdown that allows the action to be cancelled by dragging a slider across the screen. However, many users appear to inadvertently initiate emergency calls when their device is in a bag or pocket. “Nationally, all emergency services are currently experiencing record high 999 call volumes,” the National Police Chiefs Council said. “There’s a few reasons for this, but one we think is having a significant impact is an update to Android smartphones.” Met Police chief superintendent Dan Ivey said people should disable the emergency feature, claiming that an “unprecedented” number of calls to emergency lines in June were a result of people accidentally activating it. The majority of smartphone owners in the UK use Android, with Samsung, Huawei and Google Pixel phones all using the mobile operating system. Google, which first began rolling out the Emergency SOS update with the release of Android 12 in 2021, said that it was working with these smartphone manufacturers in order to resolve the issue. “To help these manufacturers prevent unintentional emergency calls on their devices, Android is providing them with additional guidance and resources,” a spokesperson for Google said. “We anticipate device manufacturers will roll out updates to their users that address this issue shortly. Users that continue to experience this issue should switch Emergency SOS off for the next couple of days.” The feature can be deactivated within the ‘Safety and Emergency’ section of Android’s settings. Android researcher Mishaal Rahman noted on Twitter that the issue also appeared to impact other law enforcement agencies around the world, including police in Canada and Europe. Read More Facebook and Instagram to block news in Canada Police warn about dangerous emergency setting on Android phones Meta rejects accusation of censorship of language around female body Facebook and Instagram to block news in Canada

The universe appears to be speaking to us, after a centuries old “echo” from a supermassive black hole was detected by scientists. The black hole located inside the Milky Way became active around 200 years ago and produced a sound that is now being studied. The research was published in Nature and focuses on the black hole named Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) found 26,000 light-years away from Earth. The noise was triggered when the object consumed gas and dust, with particles moving into the event horizon. The findings could teach us more about the activity of supermassive black holes, which continue to intrigue and confound scientists. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Author of the research Dr Frederic Marin of Strasbourg University said: “It reveals the past awakening of this gigantic object – which is four million times more massive than the Sun. “Our work presents the missing piece of evidence that X-rays from the giant molecular clouds are due to reflection of an intense, yet short-lived flare produced at or nearby Sagittarius A*. These results can further constrain the past activity of the galactic centre.” By their very nature, black holes are difficult to study as they absorb light around them, and these new findings offer insight into a fascinating part of space. Dr Marin said: “To get an idea of the increase in intensity of the X-ray emission when the black hole emerged from its quiescent state, it is as if a single glow-worm hidden in a forest suddenly became as bright as the Sun. “These findings explain why galactic molecular clouds near Sgr A* are shining more brightly than usual. It is because they are reflecting the X-rays emitted by Sgr A* 200 years ago.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Meta has announced plans to remove all news content from Facebook and Instagram in Canada ahead of a new law coming into effect that would force the platforms to share revenue with publishers. The Online News Act, known as Bill C-18, will force big technology companies to compensate news publishers for content that appears on their platforms, with Google also impacted by the legislation. “Today, we are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act (Bill C-18) taking effect,” Facebook said in a blog post. “We have repeatedly shared that in order to comply with Bill C-18, passed today in Parliament, content from news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will no longer be available to people accessing our platforms in Canada.” Ottawa has said the law creates a level playing field between online advertising giants and the shrinking news industry. Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez has promised to push back on what he describes as “threats” from Facebook and Google to remove journalism from their platforms. Meta’s plan to comply with the new law by blocking all news will also likely be harmful for news organisations, who derive web traffic from stories posted to Facebook and Instagram. The tech giant did not offer details about the timeline for the move, with the bill set to come into force six months after it receives royal assent. Meta, which is based in Menlo Park, California, has taken similar steps in the past. In 2021, it briefly blocked news from its platform in Australia after the country passed legislation that would compel tech companies to pay publishers for using their news stories. It later struck deals with Australian publishers. Laura Scaffidi, a spokesperson for the minister, said Mr Rodriguez was set to have a meeting Thursday afternoon with Google, which has hinted that removing news links from its popular search engine is a possibility. The company didn’t provide comment on the matter. Meta is already undergoing a test that blocks news for up to five percent of its Canadian users, and Google ran a similar test earlier this year. The Online News Act requires both companies to enter into agreements with news publishers to pay them for news content that appears on their sites if it helps the tech giants generate money. Ms Scaffidi said: “The tech giants do not have obligations under the act immediately after Bill C-18 passes. As part of this process, all details will be made public before any tech giant is designated under the act.” Additional reporting from agencies Read More Elon Musk confirms cage fight with Mark Zuckerberg Facebook Marketplace is most complained-about online retail platforms Meta reveals new AI that is too powerful to release Mark Zuckerberg reveals what he thinks about Apple’s headset – and it’s not good