Month: February 2022

Technical snags, criticisms of its terms of service and questions about copyright infringement plague the app’s kickoff Donald Trump last week launched his long-awaited social media app, Truth Social, luring users with the promises of a platform free from “discrimination against political ideology”. But with tech glitches plaguing the platform and early criticisms of its …

Truth Social: will Trump’s ‘free speech haven’ overcome its rocky start? Read More »

Thanks to the rapid advance of little tech, employers can now monitor every online action of their remote employees Pandemics, as the historian Yuval Noah Harari observed at the beginning of the current one, tend to accelerate history. If you doubt that then think back to, say, January 2020. If you told people then that …

Think WFH means your boss isn’t watching you? Think again | John Naughton Read More »

The Foo Fighters frontman on his favourite new band, watching celebrities eat hot sauce and Zendaya in HBO’s Euphoria Dave Grohl was born in Ohio in 1969 and raised in Virginia. He got his start as a drummer with the punk band Scream before joining Nirvana in 1990. Following the death of Kurt Cobain in …

On my radar: Dave Grohl’s cultural highlights Read More »

Samuel Gibbs was surprised when his details were used to pay for a stranger’s takeaway. It is just one of a flood of ‘guess attacks’ I am no stranger to credit card fraud: in the past I have had my card cloned and had the details stolen from a hack on a retailer. But I …

Credit card fraud: ‘How could scammers use it before I did?’ Read More »

My Robben Island consists of five watercolours painted by former South African president The contrast between the tiny austere cell on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in jail, and the infinite diversity of the digital world could not be greater. But the two will come together next month when …

Nelson Mandela paintings of life in prison to be sold as NFTs Read More »

The New York-based photographer on how he glimpsed the collapse of civilisation during Covid – in the window of a pizza place When Aaron Stern considers what inspires his work, he is reminded of the Leonard Cohen lyric, “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” In March 2020, as New York …

‘Seeing 80,000 people leave the city was ominous, and fascinating’: Aaron Stern’s best phone picture Read More »

What do you do with an online doppelgänger? Use their streaming logins, cancel their bookings or fight them for naming rights As I unsubscribe from the ninth email in three days urging me to “refinance now!” if I don’t want to miss a “special rate!”, I curse my email doppelgänger. She’s landed us on a …

My inbox is piling up with spam again and my email doppelgänger is to blame | Shelley Hepworth Read More »

Battersea Arts Centre, LondonWriter Thomas Melle delivers a lecture via his android counterpart in an unsettling show that poses big questions It’s the fingers that get to me. Bitten and weathered, the skin worn down in places, they are incredibly detailed and utterly convincing. I’m looking up close at an animatronic, or robot, of the …

Uncanny Valley review – a menacing robot examines the meaning of life Read More »

Automakers’ history of taking fat subsidies and overpromising job growth make some analysts skeptical of the deal In September, Ford stunned Michigan when it announced plans to build two massive electric vehicle (EV) plants in the nation’s southeast instead of its midwestern back yard. Fearing the future of the automotive industry was leaving Detroit, the …

‘A really bad deal’: Michigan awards GM $1bn in incentives for new electric cars Read More »

For some generations, voice notes have replaced text messages and even phone calls. But are they the future of communication – or just plain annoying? I lay on my bedroom carpet looking at the blue of the ceiling, feeling like I was in a teen movie. My phone buzzed and I picked it up to …

Our love-hate relationship with voice notes Read More »