The Best of Guardian Tech
20+ most popular Guardian Tech articles, as voted by our community.
News and comment from the @Guardian's technology team
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Is modern life ruining our powers of concentration?
Is the ping of a text stealing our focus or do we just lack willpower? And could mindless scrolling ever be good for our brains? Elle Hunt unpacks some surprising truths
«Last year, writer Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus, decrying the “huge invasive forces” corroding our concentration and championing flow as a solution, was a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. Stolen Focus concludes by calling for an urgent societal “movement to reclaim our minds” – and, in the meantime chase that flow state. (Hari himself took a months-long “digital detox” on Cape Cod.)»
Becoming a chatbot: my life as a real estate AI’s human backup
The long read: For one weird year, I was the human who stepped in to make sure a property chatbot didn’t blow its cover – I was a person pretending to be a computer pretending to be a person
Firefox and Tumblr join rush to support Mastodon social network
Elon Musk admits banning links to Twitter rival was a mistake
Investors convert ‘totally worthless’ NFTs into tax write-offs
A new service offers a way to offset losses from NFTs during a grim crypto winter that saw demand for digital collectibles vanish
‘The metaverse will be our slow death!’ Is Facebook losing its $100bn gamble on virtual reality?
The company now known as Meta has spent staggering amounts on creating an immersive successor to the traditional 2D internet. But what has it got to show for it, apart from 11,000 job losses?
Guardian Tech on Amazon
A brutal year: how the 'techlash' caught up with Facebook, Google and Amazon
Privacy scandals and antitrust issues dogged Facebook and Google and Amazon saw a rise in employee organizing
Guardian Tech on Cybersecurity
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince'
Exclusive: investigation suggests Washington Post owner was targeted five months before murder of Jamal Khashoggi
Cybersecurity firm links Piers Morgan Twitter hack to leak of 400m records
Former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison among politicians and celebrities whose details were in sample of allegedly hacked data published online
Guardian Tech on Facebook
France to block development of Facebook's Libra cryptocurrency
Finance minister warns monetary sovereignty of governments could be at risk
Guardian Tech on Facial Recognition
Major breach found in biometrics system used by banks, UK police and defence firms
Fingerprints, facial recognition and other personal information from Biostar 2 discovered on publicly accessible database
The rise of facial recognition technology
With facial recognition technology getting more sophisticated each year, technology editor Alex Hern explores the issue of privacy. Also today: Jamie Grierson on Sunday’s terrorism attack in south…
Guardian Tech on LGBTQIA
This algorithm can tell whether you're gay or straight, from a photograph
An artificial intelligence guessed the sexuality of people on a dating site with up to 91% accuracy, raising tricky ethical questions
TikTok's local moderation guidelines ban pro-LGBT content
Chinese-owned social media app bans such content even in countries where homosexuality has never been illegal
Guardian Tech on Privacy
Internet privacy: the apps that protect you from your apps
Worried about the data collected about you? A new generation of startups is making apps to put your privacy settings straight
I asked Tinder for my data. It sent me 800 pages of my deepest, darkest secrets
Reading through all this intimate information I realised the dating app knows me better than I do. But what happens if this data gets hacked – or worse, sold?
Guardian Tech on Technology
'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia
The Google, Apple and Facebook workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet. Paul Lewis reports on the Silicon Valley refuseniks who worry the race…
«“the new, digitally supercharged dynamics of the attention economy have finally crossed a threshold and become manifest in the political realm”»
Digital dystopia: how algorithms punish the poor
In an exclusive global series, the Guardian lays bare the revolution and the wreckage that is engulfing the welfare state worldwide
Guardian Tech on Tim Cook
Apple's crown is slipping – will news and TV shows be its next big thing?
Tim Cook has made Apple the most valuable brand in the world – will this be a new success or a sign of the company’s problems?
Tim Cook defends Apple's removal of Hong Kong mapping app
Apple chief said in a letter HKmap.live was ‘used maliciously to target’ officers as claim was disputed by protesters on the ground
Guardian Tech on Voice Computing
'Alexa, are you invading my privacy?'
There are more than 100m Alexa-enabled devices in our homes. But are they fun time-savers or the beginning of an Orwellian nightmare
Apple contractors 'regularly hear confidential details' on Siri recordings
Workers hear drug deals, medical details and people having sex, says whistleblower
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The meaning of life in a world without work
As technology renders jobs obsolete, what will keep us busy? Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari examines ‘the useless class’ and a new quest for purpose
Why time management is ruining our lives
The Long Read: All of our efforts to be more productive backfire – and only make us feel even busier and more stressed
Smartphone is now ‘the place where we live’, anthropologists say
A UCL study has found people around the world feel the same about their devices as they do about their homes
«Smartphone users have become “human snails carrying our homes in our pockets”, with a tendency to ignore friends and family in favour of their device, according to a landmark study.»
Decentralisation: the next big step for the world wide web
The decentralised web, or DWeb, could be a chance to take control of our data back from the big tech firms. So how does it work and when will it be here?
The best £6 I ever spent! 31 small items that could make your life a tiny bit…
Ducky toast tongs, candle sharpeners and an apple tree … our writers name one gadget, gizmo or thing they didn’t know they couldn’t live without
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Guardian Tech on Social Media
Revealed: quarter of all tweets about climate crisis produced by bots
Draft of Brown study says findings suggest ‘substantial impact of mechanized bots in amplifying denialist messages’
Tim Berners-Lee unveils global plan to save the web
Inventor of web calls on governments and firms to safeguard it from abuse and ensure it benefits humanity