Reuters Businessman John McAfee, creator of the McAfee anti-virus software, has been charged in the US with conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering. Mr McAfee and his bodyguard Jimmy Gale Watson Jr are accused of promoting cryptocurrencies to Mr McAfee’s large Twitter following to inflate prices. The currencies were then allegedly sold, making the […]
Top Stories
Facebook rainforest ads: Inquiry ordered into Amazon land sales
Getty Images/BBC Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court has ordered an inquiry into the sale of protected areas of the Amazon rainforest via Facebook. It follows a BBC investigation, which revealed plots as large as 1,000 football pitches listed among the platform’s Marketplace classified ads. The court is asking the government to “take the appropriate civil and […]
Threats of a QAnon-fueled March 4 attack create disruptions but little trouble. Researchers say police overreacted.
As the House of Representatives canceled its session amid reported threats to the Capitol on Thursday, researchers who had warned of trouble ahead of the Jan. 6 siege found themselves scratching their heads. If something was brewing, they said, it was much smaller, quieter and less obviously violent than what they had reported two months […]
Facebook Ends Ban on Political Advertising
The social network had prohibited political ads on its site indefinitely after the November election. Such ads have been criticized for spreading misinformation. SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook said on Wednesday that it planned to lift its ban on political advertising across its network, resuming a form of digital promotion that has been criticized for spreading […]
Facebook Lifts Ban on Political Advertising
The social network had prohibited political ads on its site indefinitely after the November election. Such ads have been criticized for spreading misinformation. SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook said on Wednesday that it planned to lift its ban on political advertising across its network, resuming a form of digital promotion that has been criticized for spreading […]
Virginia governor signs nation’s second state consumer privacy bill
Gov. Ralph Northam signed data privacy legislation into law on Tuesday, making Virginia the second state in the nation to adopt its own data protection rules. The law, known as the Consumer Data Protection Act, had broad support from the tech industry, including Amazon, which is building an Arlington, Va., headquarters. The legislation will allow […]
Contraception app Natural Cycles swipes at new rival from Clue
Getty Images Natural Cycles, the first app to be cleared by US regulators for use as a contraceptive, has criticised the approval of a new birth control service from period tracker app Clue. Natural Cycles knocked Clue’s product for relying purely on period dates and also said its approval process had not been as thorough. […]
China Charges Ahead With a National Digital Currency
The electronic Chinese yuan is now being tested in cities such as Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing. No other major power is as far along with a homegrown digital currency. Annabelle Huang recently won a government lottery to try China’s latest economics experiment: a national digital currency. After joining the lottery through the social media app […]
Biden can’t fix the chip shortage any time soon. Here’s why.
Semiconductor executive Tom Caulfield knew a crisis was brewing when he started getting frantic calls from big automakers just before Christmas. “Tom, you’re killing me. You need to make more,” Caulfield, the chief executive of chipmaker GlobalFoundries, recalls the auto executives saying. “Ford, Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler-Benz, Fiat Chrysler, GM — every one of them became […]
Biden hails Amazon workers pressing to unionize in Alabama in unusual sign of support
SEATTLE — President Biden gave Amazon warehouse staff in Alabama fighting to join a union their biggest support yet, tweeting a video Sunday night saying workers should be able to make their decision in the election without pressure from the company. More than 5,800 workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., are in the […]
Seniors Seeking Vaccines Have a Problem: They Can’t Use the Internet
Older adults living alone often lack access or an understanding of technology, and many are unsure how to sign up for an appointment. Annette Carlin feels trapped. Before the pandemic, Ms. Carlin, who is 84, loved to go on walks in Novato, Calif., with her grandchildren and dance at the senior center. Since March, though, […]
A Spreadsheet of China’s Censorship Shows the Human Toll
An online spreadsheet with an anonymous minder tabulates Xi Jinping’s crackdown on speech. In China, don’t question the heroes. At least seven people over the past week have been threatened, detained or arrested after casting doubt over the government’s account of the deaths of Chinese soldiers during a clash last year with Indian troops. Three […]
Away From Silicon Valley, the Military Is the Ideal Customer
SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. — Over the rolling, scrub-spotted hills of the Southern California coast, where defense contractors once tested rockets and lasers for President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense program, what looked like a big, mechanical insect stalked a white pickup truck. Half a mile away, 28-year-old Palmer Luckey, one of the tech industry’s […]
MyHeritage offers ‘creepy’ deepfake tool to reanimate dead
MyHeritage Genealogy site MyHeritage has introduced a tool which uses deepfake technology to animate the faces in photographs of dead relatives. Called DeepNostalgia, the firm acknowledged that some people might find the feature “creepy” while others would consider it “magical”. It said it did not include speech to avoid the creation of “deepfake people”. It […]
Amazon rainforest plots sold via Facebook Marketplace ads
Parts of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest are being illegally sold on Facebook, the BBC has discovered. The protected areas include national forests and land reserved for indigenous peoples. Some of the plots listed via Facebook’s classified ads service are as large as 1,000 football pitches. Facebook said it was “ready to work with local authorities”, but […]