Science and Technology (old posts, page 206)
Iran’s cyber forces have many ways to attack U.S., experts warn
‘Trauma is messy, but music will come of it’: Jessica Curry on her new album, Shielding Songs
The award-wining composer of soundtracks to video games including Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is composing again for the first time since a traumatic pandemic
For the fortunate among us, the Covid lockdowns have, years later, become a memory – if not distant, then certainly ever-so-slightly faded. We have had a few years now, to get out there, to rebuild careers and relationships, to travel, to live in the world again. That’s not the case for everyone. Award-winning composer Jessica Curry, who crafted the beguiling, elegiac soundtracks to games such as Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and Dear Esther, has only just emerged. Diagnosed with a degenerative disease in her mid-20s and seriously immunocompromised as a result of her condition, she began isolating at the start of the pandemic, and for the next five years barely left her home. While there, unable to work or write, her world began to collapse.
“Like many people I had an extraordinarily painful and difficult pandemic,” she says. “I watched my dad die on Zoom, and then my auntie and more family members. Then they found a tumour in my ovary, and I had major abdominal surgery, but the operation had gone wrong, so I nearly died in 2022. While I was recovering from the third operation, the roof of our house fell in. It felt like a metaphor for everything. If a novelist had written this, no one would believe the story. And things just kept going wrong. So I wasn’t writing music, I wasn’t even listening to music. All of a sudden, I couldn’t bear it. I’m still trying to work out what that rejection was about – I was just in too much of a mental crisis. I wasn’t even feeding or dressing myself.”
Continue reading...Inside the No Space for Bezos movement: ‘One man rents a city for three days? That’s obscene’
The Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos, is about to descend on Venice with his fiancee, some ex-Marines and his limitless credit card. We meet the Italian activists who are saying: enough
When she heard that Jeff Bezos was getting married in Venice this June, Heather Jane Johnson felt worse than she had in her entire life. Twenty-five years ago, she ceased trading as a bookseller in Boston, Massachusetts. “I lost a lot because of Bezos and the complicity of Americans in the making of Amazon,” the 53-year-old says. “A big reason I moved to Italy is because I felt betrayed by my countrypeople.”
So when posters went up calling a public meeting in the city she now calls home, she went, and she has been to every meeting of anti-Bezos activists since, including one the day before her own wedding last week. “These young people have really restored my faith in humanity,” Johnson says.
Continue reading...YouTube fires back amid push to include platform in Australia’s under-16s social media ban
Online video hosting service accuses the nation’s online safety boss Julie Inman Grant of ignoring parents and teachers
Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast
YouTube has criticised calls for it to be included in the under-16s social media ban, accusing the nation’s online safety boss of ignoring parents and teachers.
The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has urged the government to rethink its decision to carve out the video sharing platform from the minimum social media age which will apply to apps such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email
Continue reading...‘It’s cheap but it’s not disposable’: why fast tech is a growing waste problem
Low-cost and quickly discarded products are playing a key role in world’s fastest-growing waste problem – electronics
It is cheap, often poorly made, and usually ends up in the bin or buried among the other knick-knacks, takeaway menus and birthday candles in the kitchen drawer.
Known as “fast-tech”, these low-cost electronics are increasingly common – from mini-fans and electric toothbrushes, to portable chargers and LED toilet seats, often bought for just a few pounds online.
Continue reading...China’s trying to slim down, which will fatten the smartwatch market
Sales are already surging thanks to Beijing's subsidies and Trump's tariffs
China recently launched an initiative to reduce the incidence of obesity in the country, a move analyst firm IDC thinks will fatten the market for smartwatches and smart wristbands.…
Can a revolutionary new telescope solve the mystery of planet nine? – podcast
Ever since Pluto was demoted from planet to dwarf planet in 2006, astronomers have been wondering whether Neptune really is the most distant planet from the sun. Now, a new telescope could uncover what lies in the farthest reaches of the solar system. The Vera C Rubin Observatory released its first images this week, and soon the world’s most powerful digital camera will be pointing across the whole of the night sky. Scientists are hopeful that if planet nine exists, the telescope will find it within its first year of operation. Ian Sample is joined by Dr Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science, to find out how Pluto lost its planetary status, why scientists think there could be another super-Earth, and why planet nine has been so hard to find
Clips: BBC, NBC, CBC
First images of distant galaxies captured by ‘ultimate’ telescope
Continue reading...Elastic named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Security Analytics Platforms, Q2 2025
We’re excited to share that Elastic has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Security Analytics Platforms, Q2 2025.
At Elastic, we believe security starts with the data. Elastic Security enables teams to detect, investigate, and respond to threats at scale, without lock-in or limits — powered by the speed and flexibility of Elasticsearch — and is grounded in a commitment to openness, innovation, and customer control.
https://static-www.elastic.co/v3/assets/bltefdd0b53724fa2ce/blt2a4d03e9432e99f4/685aa7bccfb1bb245fdfd25b/Image_Security-Analytics-Platforms-Q2-2025_(1).png,Image_Security-Analytics-Platforms-Q2-2025 (1).pngWe believe this recognition reflects our engineering-led approach to solving security as a data problem — with AI-driven analytics, intuitive case management, and scalable deployment models that meet customers where they are.