How and why a YouTube chat about chess got flagged for hate speech
Last June, Antonio Radić, the host of a YouTube chess channel with more than a million subscribers, was live-streaming an interview with the grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura when the broadcast suddenly cut out. Instead of a lively discussion about chess openings, famous games and iconic players, viewers were told Radić’s video...
Technology: Sprint to adapt smartwatches to help detect Covid, other infections
Five years ago, on a flight to Norway, Stanford University biologist Michael Snyder noticed that his body wasn’t behaving as it should. According to the multiple fitness trackers he happened to be wearing at the time, his heart rate was unusually high and his pulse ox – a measure of...
Unions condemn Facebook bullying, call for bolder steps to tackle ‘news deserts’
Journalists all over the world have, through their unions, told Facebook and Google to recognise the media as an essential service and stop exploiting them. In speaking out against Facebook and Google, journalists say they want to secure, support and sustain public-interest journalism on radio and television, in print and...
Facebook ‘re-friends’ Australia after revenue sharing law standoff
Facebook announced it would reverse its decision to block Australian news from the platform after a breakthrough in negotiations with Australia’s government over its proposed News Media Bargaining Code, the International Federation of Journalists reports (IFJ). In response, the IFJ and its Australian affiliate the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance...
Backslash from publishers as Facebook shuts out Australia over revenue
Facebook has faced a backlash from publishers and politicians after blocking news feeds in Australia in a surprise escalation of a dispute with the government over a law to require it to share revenue from news. Facebook wiped out pages from Australian state governments and charities as well as from...
New report: Western sources still dominate how the Africa story is told
One-third of all African stories in news outlets on the continent are sourced from foreign news services, a new report from Africa No Filter, says. The How African Media Covers Africa report highlights the fact that stories about Africa continue to be told through the same persistent and negative stereotypes...
How police, spies and hackers get around your smartphone’s encryption
Lawmakers and law enforcement agencies around the world, including in the United States, have increasingly called for backdoors in the encryption schemes that protect your data, arguing that national security is at stake. But new research indicates governments already have methods and tools that, for better or worse, let them...
Anti-secrecy activists publish a trove of ransomware victims’ data
For years, radical transparency-focused activists like WikiLeaks have blurred the line between whistle-blowing and hacking. Often, they’ve published any data they consider to be of public interest, no matter how questionable the source. But now one leak-focused group is mining a controversial new vein of secrets: the massive caches of...
Opinion: Marginalised groups were ‘mistreated’ by Wikipedia’s editing corps
More than decade ago, I wrote an essay comparing Wikipedia to a vibrant city, how it “can send you down unlikely alleyways” via the many links embedded on a single page: There are the links to articles about other people or places mentioned; links to categories of articles on similar...
Billions poured into Covid vaccine facilitated multiple tests at the same time
The slowest part of vaccine development isn’t finding candidate treatments, but testing them. This often takes years, with companies running efficacy and safety tests on animals and then in humans. Human testing requires three phases that involve increasing numbers of people and proportionately escalating costs. The Covid-19 vaccines went through...
