Why is Anonymous helping teenage lesbians? | James Ball
Anonymous may not be known for its gay rights credentials, but this loose collective of libertarians loves an underdog
Any experienced internet denizen might feel wary on seeing the words "teenage lesbians" and "hacker collective Anonymous" in close proximity. And, quite probably, with good reason, especially if they're using a work computer.
But the situation isn't what they might fear: members of Anonymous have vowed to take action in the case of Kaitlyn Hunt, an 18-year-old women from the US who is facing prosecution over her relationship with her 15-year-old girlfriend.
Shortly after her 18th birthday, the parents of Hunt's girlfriend secretly recorded the duo discussing a make-out session in the school bathroom – and used this to go to the police. She is facing charges of "lewd and lascivious battery" on a minor.
Generously, prosecutors are offering her a deal in which she'll face a mere two years in prison for having a younger girlfriend. Naturally, prosecutors and the girlfriend's parents alike claim the case is nothing to do with Hunt's sexual orientation.
For many members of Anonymous – Anons – lesbianism has, for now, begun and ended with what we might politely refer to as, ah, "adult entertainment" videos.
The collective is not traditionally known for having fantastic gender politics or gay rights credentials. The word "fag" as a jest, an insult and virtually punctuation across the group's chats.
But this case has all the right ingredients to provoke Anonymous's ire. Young people facing criminal prosecution for typical teenage acts. Parents apparently allowed to surveil the conversations of teenage girls (creepy, no?) with impunity. And sentences which, as seems so common in the US, seem to bear no proportion to the "crime" concerned.
So their pledge to step in should really come as no surprise. The reason that it does, for some, is that Anonymous seems entirely inconsistent on alleged sex offences, treatment of women and attitude towards gay people.
Anonymous is often, but not always, among the core defenders of Julian Assange against the accusations of sex crimes he faces in Sweden. And shamefully, many Anons have played a large part in the demonisation of his accusers, chronicled in Alex Gibney's "We Steal Secrets" WikiLeaks biopic, out in the US this week.
But Anons have also been at the forefront of trying to seek justice for alleged rapists of women elsewhere – to the point of bordering on vigilantism.
Viewed in isolation, the three separate operations seem entirely contradictory. But they're partly explained by Anonymous's underlying politics and attitudes: Anons are libertarian. They mistrust the state, and don't like interference. And they will pick the underdog every day of the week.
Anons will join whichever side of the fight seems to be losing, or seems to be facing an injustice (real or imagined). They're not about to start discussing intersectionality at length.
This also accounts for a lot of Anons' perceived homophobia to outsiders: they are not, and will never be, delicate with language. Anonymous grew out of 4chan, one of the bluntest, rudest, trolls' nests on the internet. Just because the language is homophobic doesn't mean their intentions are – or at least, not always.
Anonymous is widely misunderstood. It's thought of as a group, or a membership organisation, maybe the online version of a political party. Even members of political parties can have widely divergent groups – just ask David Cameron – but Anonymous is far less coherent even than that.
Want to be a member of Anonymous? Say you're a member of Anonymous. And you're done. The unifying idea, if there is one, is a sense of injustice, belief in free speech bordering on the fundamentalist, and a libertarian streak. Everything else is optional. So, when it comes to gender and LGBT politics, Anonymous can be a crowd of misogynistic asshats with bigoted opinions. Or they can be progressives who either couldn't care less about sexuality, or actively support LGBT rights, and fight against injustices. Or anywhere in between.
In other words, there are as many attitudes towards LGBT within Anonymous as there are Anons. Just like everyone else, really.
James Ballguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Guardian Viral Video Chart: Jimmy Kimmel, Eurovision and sad cats
Breakfast by Morecambe and Wise, clothes by Abercrombie & Fitch and a sob story from the mayor of Toronto
This week's Viral Video Chart is guaranteed to give you a good cry – but we can offer you tears of laughter, as well as tears of sadness. We defy you to watch the last days of Zach Sobiech without grabbing a box of tissues. Zach's inspirational story - and his song, Clouds – have taken the internet by storm.
The comedy world mourned a great writer last week with the death of Eddie Braben, who wrote sketches for Morecambe and Wise. We celebrate his work with one of the funniest Morecambe and Wise sketches ever - Breakfast. Or do you have another favourite?
There is more laughter in store as two hapless gaming fans join Burnie Burns and his crew of scientists in Immersion! Gavin and Michael are thrown behind the wheel to figure out if a video game car can beat its real life equivalent with a professional race car driver. Pass the sick bag …
If that's not exciting enough for you, we join surfers at Teahupoo in Tahititi as they tackle the heaviest wave in the world and there's a surf-eit of liquid chocolate in our clip from a chocolate factory in Melbourne, Australia. How do they do that?
Chocolate is great for cheering people up – and our sad cats seem as if they need a Kit Kat or two to buck them up. Jimmy Kimmel often has a smile on his face – and he's up to mischief with his spoof interview of Toronto mayor Rob Ford who is accused of taking drugs.
Finally, Eurovision may have reduced you to tears of laughter – or tears of boredom – but we leave you with a smile on your face as you watch our misheard lyrics clip. Sadly it doesn't improve the quality of the songs!
Guardian Viral Video Chart. Compiled by Unruly Media and emoted by Janette
1. My Last Days: Meet Zach Sobiech
Brave lad's legacy
2. Classic Comedy Morecambe and Wise
Makes today's comics look like toast
3. Surfing the Heaviest Wave in the World - Teahupoo
Pipe dreams
4. Abercrombie & Fitch Gets a Brand Readjustment #FitchTheHomeless
A dressing down
5. Sad Cat Diary
Paws for thought
6. Jimmy Kimmel Interviews Toronto Mayor Rob Ford
Chain reaction
7. Eurovision 2013 Misheard lyrics
Possibly better than the real lyrics
8. Wait for it...
Chocolate heaven
9. Immersion: Simulation Racer
This is sick
Source: Viral Video Chart. Compiled from data gathered at 14:00 on 23 May 2013. The Viral Video Chart is currently based on a count of the embedded videos and links on approximately 2m blogs, as well as Facebook and Twitter.
Janette Owenguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Guardian to launch new platform to streamline access to web content
Theguardian.com will provide one destination for UK, mobile, US and Australian sites as monthly digital browsers hits 80m
The Guardian is to launch a new global web presence, theguardian.com, in recognition of the newspaper's increasingly international digital appeal.
The move will streamline access to Guardian content – amalgamating the main entry point Guardian.co.uk, mobile site m.guardian.co.uk, US homepage guardiannews.com and the soon-to-launch Australian digital edition – into one core web destination.
In the last five years, the number of monthly Guardian digital browsers has grown from 20 million to more than 80 million, with much of that growth coming from international markets.
"Every month, our online content is accessed from almost every country around the world," said Tanya Cordrey, chief digital officer at Guardian News & Media, in a blog post called Going global on our digitaljourney. "In fact, UK users now represent just a third of our total audience."
The home of the newspaper's content has been guardian.co.uk, which is the only non-"dot com" domain suffix in the top 10 Google News list of digital news outlets.
"This may be a small URL change, but it marks a big step for the Guardian and reflects our evolution from a much-respected national print newspaper based only in the UK … to a leading global news and media brand … and an ever-growing worldwide audience accessing Guardian journalism every minute of every day," said Cordrey.
Cordrey added that the move to theguardian.com will make for a simplified user experience, but will also be more appealing to major advertisers in international markets, who are perhaps not drawn to the idea of running campaigns on a UK-specific website, despite the reality of the Guardian's global digital readership.
The move, which will take place later this year, will involve the transition of millions of URLs attached to the Guardian's websites and about 15 years of archived content.
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Mark Sweneyguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Boot up: Glass views, Surface v iPad, Bitcoin flourishes, SGS4 hits 10m and more
Plus broadband for Staffordshire, price elasticity in the smartphone business, how Chrome will dominate, and more
A burst of 8 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team
Glass Questions >> ongoingTim Bray on Google Glass:
Do They Meet a Need? · Seems pretty obvious to me; I'm damn sick of hauling out my mobile to find out what time it is, or to check on my next meeting, or to glance at a map, or to snap a quick photo of an interesting streetlight or whatever.
Will They Succeed? · I haven't got the vaguest. They need work on power consumption and software fit/finish and syncing and lots of other things, and the manufacturing cost needs to come way, way down.
A lot of the things Glass does could maybe work just fine on a smart watch or some such. So in a couple years it might be ubiquitous, maybe it'll just catch on for certain professional uses, or maybe it just falls flat.
But people, and there are a lot of them, who are saying "Glass is doomed because it's dorky-looking/privacy-invasive/anti-social" are pretty well wrong; it's more complex than that.
Yup.
Microsoft caught lying about tablet size in comparison to Apple's iPad >> AppleInsideCan't we all just get along? (Thanks @slimbowski for the link.)
Bitcoin hits the big time, to the regret of some early boosters >> MIT Technology ReviewBitpay recently received $3m from Founders Fund, led by Facebook's first major investor, Peter Thiel.
BitPay CEO Tony Gallippi told me that Thiel invested because he saw how the company could help ease online commerce across borders; the company already handles $5m in transactions each month and says the figure is growing. "Traditional payments such as credit cards don't even work in half the world, so companies just choose to not service international customers," Gallippi said. "That leaves a big opportunity." He plans to take further investment later this year but told me it will be more for reasons of making strategic contacts than a need for cash, since he and his cofounders have significant Bitcoin holdings.
One reason Bitcoin is interesting, says Jeremy Liew, a partner with Lightspeed Venture Partners, is that it could displace the practice of wiring money across borders, which underpins much international trade today and can be onerous. "If I'm trying to wire a supplier in China it's a three- or four-day process with heavy fees," he says. "Bitcoin transactions can be instant and free."
Bitcoin will work in places where credit cards won't, seems to be the suggestion.
Superfast broadband for Staffordshire after BT wins £27.4m deal >> V3.co.ukBT has won yet another superfast broadband deal, this time in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, in which the vast majority of the region will be hooked to speeds of at least 24Mbps.
The £27.35m deal will see 472,000 premises – around 97% of the region – receive the high-speed service. The councils involved are investing £7.44m, while £7.44m will come from the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) framework and £12.47m from BT.
A Staffordshire county council member described the fibre infrastructure as being "as important as road or rail in providing the accessibility and opportunities for our residents and businesses."
And this apparently means we're just past the halfway stage in the national fibre broadband rolling.
Samsung GALAXY S4 hits 10 million milestone in first month >> SAMSUNG TOMORROW GlobalSamsung Electronics announced that global channel sales of its GALAXY S4, a life companion for a richer, fuller, simpler life, has surpassed 10 million units sold in less than one month after its commercial debut. Launched globally on April 27 in 60 countries, the phone is estimated to be selling at a rate of four units per second.
Android's market share is literally a joke >>Tech.pinionsJohn Kirk:
Android accounts for approximately 70% of global smartphone shipments and 29% of global profits. This means that the average Android manufacturer creates just 0.41% of profit for each point of market share (0.29/0.70 = 0.414). In other words, the average Android manufacturer needs to capture 2.4 points of market share just to increase their [share of] market profit by 1 percentage point.
Such a low fair share profit index may indicate that Android manufacturers are:
– Having difficulty differentiating their product;
– Sacrificing profits in order to buy market share (the "race to the bottom");
– Unable to reach economies of scale in the manufacturing process.
Kirk's point is that people who talk about low-cost iPhones are overlooking price elasticity. Although might he be overlooking the fact that the sector of the market which is price inelastic has been almost exhausted?
How Google plans to rule the computing world through Chrome >> Tech News and AnalysisKevin Tofel:
if you're a Chrome user today, you'll be more immersed in the Chrome ecosystem a year from now, even if you don't have an "official" Chromebook. This all depends on how well Google pulls off its strategy to upend the desktop computing world, but so far, it seems to be on track.
Bear in mind the apps in this vision will be truly cross-platform as they'll run on any Windows, Mac or Linux computer with Chrome installed. If it can get developers on board — and those I spoke with at Google I/O are ready to embrace the effort — Google will have a thriving desktop platform built on top of the platforms created by others. But it will be a desktop that's far more agile, with new features added within days or weeks, not months or years.
Welcome to Chrome, my desktop today and your desktop of the future.
It depends more on how much people want web apps that might or might not run offline, and might or might not have a better UI than a native app, on their desktop. Other than that, solid.
At the Mayo Clinic, iPhones and iPads are the standard >> CITEworldTroy Newman, an IT specialist who oversees app development for Mayo, adds that the clinic was accustomed to running on a single platform - Windows - and wanted its mobile initiative to be similarly standardized.
"All our developers know how to do Windows development, so we made the same kind of same decision for iOS. We wanted a platform where we could get developers up to speed and train them to develop apps."
Finding that expertise hasn't always been easy.
"Our team's pretty small," says Newman. "As we've grown, it has been difficult to find people with the right skills who want to work in Rochester, Minnesota."
15,000 devices using those apps. Meanwhile, the 25,000 PCs that it also uses might be scaled back. Unless Surface Pro has come along in the nick of time.
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Charles Arthurguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Mail Online scoops biggest ever digital day with Boston marathon bombing
'Abby Clancy poses in nothing but heels' story provides joint highest website traffic day for the Sun
The Boston marathon bombing on 16 April provided Mail Online with its biggest ever digital day, attracting more than 9.5 million unique users.
However, the bombing proved the 12th and 16th most popular web days in April for the Independent and Mirror websites respectively – while the Sun website network's joint highest traffic day last month coincided with a story headlined "Abby Clancy poses in nothing but heels".
Coverage of the terrorist attack on 16 April underlined Mail Online's seemingly inexorable global growth, particularly in North America, with just 39.8% of the 9,558,256 global unique browsers that day coming from the UK.
This was the lowest proportion of UK visitors in any day in April, according to the Mail Online's officially audited Audit Bureau of Circulations certificate published on Thursday.
A week later, Dzokhar Tsarnaev being charged with using a weapon of mass destruction in relation to the Boston marathon bombing provided Mail Online with its second biggest day on record, with 9,226,255 daily unique browsers.
While total digital records were being broken this was not the case on mobile devices – Mail Online's iPhone or Android apps barely registered an uplift in average usage on either of the Boston bombing news days.
April also highlighted the biggest online traffic drivers for the Sun, the biggest selling UK newspaper in print, which has failed to capture an equivalent digital audience.
The Sun's biggest online story in April was "Michelle Keegan in topless pic riddle", which included a picture of breasts posted on her Instagram page, on 5 April, and "Abby Clancy poses in nothing but heels" five days later.
The two days were almost neck-and-neck in terms of traffic, with Keegan narrowly shading it, at just over 2 million daily browsers. The Sun's daily average is just under 1.7 million.
Mirror Group Digital's barnstorming April, with total web traffic surging 30% month on month, was driven by a range of factors.
While the Boston bombing failed to register as a major traffic day, ranking 16th for the month as a whole, the charging of Tsarnaev proved the biggest traffic driver with 2,067,955 daily users across all devices.
It was also its biggest day of mobile browsers across Mirror Group Digital's website network, which includes Mirror.co.uk, 3am.co.uk and MirrorFootball.co.uk.
However, the other major events that fuelled Mirror Group Digital's traffic growth was an exclusive video from inside North Korea, which provided its second biggest day in April with 1,912,588 daily browsers.
The next biggest day of traffic was related to the Grand National, at about 1.6 million, while Margaret Thatcher's death drew 1.55 million.
The Boston bombing also provided the biggest traffic day in April for Telegraph.co.uk and guardian.co.uk (5.8 million and 4.55 million respectively). For Independent.co.uk, it only ranked 16th in April, with Thatcher's death coverage on 8 April the biggest at 1.55 million.
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Chatterbox: Friday
The place to talk about games and other things that matter
It's Friday.
Keith Stuartguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Protect children from internet pornography, report demands
Report finds evidence of a high correlation between exposure to violent and sadistic images and behaviour
Children are exposed to violent and sadistic imagery which risks distorting their attitudes towards relationships and sex, according to the children's commissioner for England.
A report released on Thursday by the commissioner's office found that children who watch pornography are more likely to develop sexually risky behaviour and become sexually active at a younger age.
It called for urgent action to "develop children's resilience to pornography" after discovering that a significant number have access to sexually explicit images. It also called on the Department for Education to ensure all schools delivered effective relationship and sex education, including how to use the internet safely.
"We are living at a time when violent and sadistic imagery is readily available to very young children … even if they do not go searching for it, their friends may show it to them or they may stumble on it while using the internet," said the commissioner, Maggie Atkinson.
"For years we have applied age restrictions to films at the cinema but now we are permitting access to far more troubling imagery via the internet. It is a risky experiment to allow a generation of young people to be raised on a diet of pornography."
The report, based on a review of academic research, also found that pornography could influence children's sexual attitudes, foster a negative attitude towards relationships and lead them to engage in risky behaviours such as unprotected anal sex, sex at a younger age and the use of alcohol and drugs during sex.
Sue Berelowitz, the deputy children's commissioner, said compulsory education was the only way to ensure children were guarded "against the possible impact of pornography on them and their relationships". She said: "As part of our inquiry into the sexual exploitation of children in gangs and groups we have seen that young perpetrators of sexual abuse describe their activity as 'like having been in a porn film'. This report provides the evidence to support there being a high correlation between exposure to pornography and it influencing children's behaviour and attitudes."
Miranda Horvath, senior lecturer at Middlesex University, which led the review of academic evidence, said: "When pornography is discussed, it is often between groups of people with polarised moral views on the subject. Rather than adopting a particular ideological stance, this report uses evidence-based research to draw its conclusions and further the debate."
The report's recommendations echo calls made by the End Violence Against Women coalition to make sex and relationships education compulsory in secondary schools. A recent survey by the National Association of Head Teachers found many parents believe schools should teach about the dangers of pornography as soon as children are old enough to use the internet.
Alexandra Toppingguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
HTC managers depart as revenues dwindle and First delayed in UK
Widespread departures in Asia, Europe and US lead former staffer to suggest friends there should 'just quit. Leave now' - as Everything Everywhere delays HTC First launch
Taiwanese phone manufacturer HTC has seen an exodus of top managers as the company struggles to stay profitable amid falling revenues. Key figures including the chief product officer Kouji Koudera, Asian chief executive Lennard Hoornik, director of global communications Jason Gordon and five other senior staff have departed in recent months.
In another blow to the company, Facebook has delayed the European launch of the HTC "First" - the first and so far only phone to incorporate its "Home" app which takes over the Android home screen - following disappointing sales in the US which saw it axed after only a few weeks on sale.
With HTC's monthly revenues for the first four months of 2013 at under two-thirds of that for the same period in 2012, and first-quarter operating profits down by 99%, the company is struggling to cope with the growing power of South Korean rival Samsung, which announced on Thursday that it has shipped 10m units of its new Galaxy S4 smartphone less than a month after its formal launch - substantially faster than the 50 days its predecessor, the S3, took to reach the same mark.
Koudera's departure comes after HTC generally won plaudits from reviewers for the design of its HTC One flagship phone, which uses an aluminium case; many preferred it over the Galaxy S4. But the company has been unable to secure volume shipments in the way that Samsung - which owns its own production lines for screens and memory - does.
The mood inside HTC appears to be darkening, though. As first pointed out by The Verge, Eric Lin, formerly HTC's product strategy manager for two and a half years who quit the company in February to join Skype, suggested in a tweet "to all my friends still at HTC - just quit. Leave now. It's tough to do, but you'll be so much happier, I swear." Lin clarified that he actually uses the HTC First, and that "I think HTC makes great phones".
The next day he added "My heart goes out to the huge number of current and ex-HTC-ers who reached out to me today. I love you all." He suggested that "I don't miss the place, only the people" - perhaps implying that he disagreed with higher managers.
The Wall Street Journal quoted an unnamed HTC executive saying that the company had sold around five million of the One smartphone since its launch a month ago. As with Samsung's figure, those would have been shipped to carriers and wholesalers rather than necessarily being in the hands of users. The executive told the WSJ that orders "are still more than what we can supply".
Other recent departures from HTC include:
• Rebecca Rowland, global retail marketing manager, to Microsoft;
• Phil Roberson, UK and Ireland regional director
• Mike Coombes, UK and Ireland head of sales
• Florian Seiche, chief of Europe, Middle East and Africa
• John Starkweather, manager and worldwide director of digital marketing, joined AT&T
Meanwhile the HTC First, which was pulled off the market by the biggest carrier, AT&T, in the US after just over a month following what are believed to have been disappointing sales - which are expected to leave HTC with excess inventory - will not go on sale in the UK as scheduled this month.
In a statement, Facebook said: "We've listened to feedback from users on their experience using Home. While many people love it, we've heard a lot of great feedback about how to make Home substantially better. As a result we're focusing the next few months on adding customisation features that address the feedback we received. While we focus on making Home better, we are going to limit supporting new devices and think it makes a lot of sense for EE and Orange to hold off deploying the HTC First in Europe."
Charles Arthurguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Woolwich attack highlights power of mobile technology as a news source
Breaking news is no longer the preserve of established broadcasters, thanks to the camera phone and social media
A man covered in the blood of his recent victim, still holding the weapons, explains to a passer-by with a camera phone the motives for his appalling attack. Peppered with political messages and carrying a clumsy apology to "women who had to see that", the bloodied man is not enraged that his macabre and twisted actions have been filmed, he is gratified. This is a 21st century terrorist "press" conference, conducted on a pavement in Woolwich in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon.
The video obtained by ITV News, but evidently not actually shot by them, is uploaded and disseminated to the globe, through YouTube, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, on emailed links, on reddit, Tumblr. Meanwhile on Twitter another eyewitness, rapper "Boya Dee", whose timeline of mundane tweets previously focused on cheesy jokes, Arsenal and the appeal of Mila Kunis, was able to give a firsthand, dramatic and colloquial account of what he saw. It did not need a reporter or policeman to relay what he witnessed: "The two black bredas run this white guy over then hop out the car and start chopping mans head off with machete!!"
Attacks by extremists which include filmed beheadings and executions are nothing new. Islamic extreme terror groups in the Middle East and Chechnya have deployed the tactic of filming and disseminating shocking footage for well over a decade. Increasingly it is a tactic also seen in the narcotic wars of Mexico, with a series of gruesome and public murders, beheadings and disembowellings of those seeking to interfere with the narco trade. It is distressingly easy to find all of these images online.
The speed of uploading images and video, the quality and length of video on camera phones, the ability to stream live events from a phone without a battery of attendant satellite trucks, and the frictionless sharing of all material through social recommendation transform our expectation and experience of news. We still know very little about the planning and motivation for the attacks in Woolwich, but we know the tools of recording and dissemination are leading us into a world of streamed events and atrocity which will find us, unfiltered, through the phones in our pockets.
What this means in a commercial, political and cultural realm is unclear. News organisations, such as the Irish start-up Storyful, focus on the verification of non-mainstream footage – a kind of 21st century Associated Press. The major platforms for dissemination; YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, have tried hard to hold the line that they are neutral networks, but as their usage figures overtake those of mainstream media they too are forced to respond to difficult editorial and ethical problems thrown out by this hyper connectivity. Privately all organisations acknowledge that as the default news providers for the world, there has to be attention paid to both verification and filtering systems. Two months ago, Facebook removed gruesome footage of a beheading from its pages. It said it would be "re-evaluating" its content policy.
Writing recently in the New Republic, legal scholar and columnist Jeffrey Rosen described semi-confidential meetings in Silicon Valley of a group he calls "the Deciders", effectively the legal and policy heads of social networks, who are trying to hash out a standard of free speech which can be applied to the open web. Rosen observes that the work in screening stretches to building complex algorithms, but that ultimately the broader interpretation of expression in accordance with US standards of free speech is likely to prevail. The challenges, though, of extreme acts of graphic terror are as much the problem now of these technology companies as they used to be of news and picture editors.
The language of protest and shock have adapted themselves more quickly to the new technology platforms than any filtering mechanism or official media can keep up with. Whether it is the relatively benign topless ambushes of the Femen group of feminists, the handmade signs of Occupy Wall Street, or the hacking of Twitter accounts of the Syrian Electronic Army, protest can aggregate an international audience before the news anchor has brushed her hair. Terror has adopted the same path as we witnessed with the Boston bombings and now the butchering of a man in broad daylight on a south London street.
The impact of events is as much in direct proportion to our ability to witness them vividly and instantaneously, with the filter of time and geography removed. When a fertiliser factory in the small town of West, Texas explodes, our understanding of the impact is delivered through an amateur camera phone video which is blown out of the owner's hand. Our understanding of the horror of the Boston marathon attack is relayed by a photo of a pale runner, his lower legs jagged and incomplete, being wheeled to an ambulance. It reaches the world before he reaches the operating theatre.
When American Airlines flight 11, crashed into the World Trade Centre on September 11 2001, the precise moment of impact was captured by three people with video cameras: an artist in Brooklyn who was filming the Manhattan skyline for an installation project; a tourist who did not realise he had captured the first collision in the corner of a frame until months later; and a documentary maker filming firefighters.
Only a dozen years ago, the largest act of instantaneous terror taking place in the world's most photographed city, was captured on video by three people. Now, even the most mundane setting can yield the most potent and graphic images, filmed in real time, and shot to the world in a second. The future of how those images are received and filtered relies as much on the ability of networks to decide and implement their own rules and norms as on any top down filtering or editing process.
Emily Bellguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Phil Zimmerman creator of PGP encryption talks about the importance of privacy software online
This week, Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur meets CEO and founder of Silent Circle Phil Zimmerman. Phil discusses how he created one of the earliest online email encryption software, PGP, and why his new venture in the app market is proving a popular with security services and businesses around the world.
In her latest Email from America, Aleks Krotoski writes to Yahoo to plead for the survival in it's present form of their most recent purchase, Tumblr.
And we have a tech news round-up, including Apple's tussle with the US senate over their tax affairs and the 'hit and tweet' incident which led to Norwich police tracking down a driver who boasted on Twitter about knocking down a cyclist.
Charles ArthurJason PhippsAleks KrotoskiLib Dem opposition to communications data bill 'putting country at risk'
Following Woolwich attack, Labour peers Lord West and Lord Reid call for Nick Clegg to revive 'snooper's charter' bill
Political pressure is mounting to revive the communications data bill in the wake of the Woolwich attack, with Labour peers Lord West and Lord Reid leading calls for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats to drop their opposition to the legislation. West said Clegg was putting the country at risk.
Clegg hailed a major political victory when he prevented the draft bill being allowed into the Queen's speech. The home secretary, Theresa May, had hoped she had changed the bill sufficiently from its original format to win the deputy prime minister's support, and even when the bill did not feature in the Queen's speech, she refused to accept that it had been killed off.
Reid, the former Labour home secretary, said such measures were essential to combating terrorism, and warned it could otherwise take "some huge tragedy" to show the decision was wrong.
Lord Carlile, a Liberal Democrat and a former government reviewer of counter-terrorism, reiterated his call for the bill to be revived.
He said on BBC's Newsnight on Wednesday: "We have to learn proportionate lessons from what has occurred. We mustn't rush to judgment. But we must ensure that the police and the security services have for the future the tools they need that will enable them to prevent this kind of attack taking place.
"I hope that this will give the government pause for thought about their abandonment, for example, of the communications data bill, and possibly pause for thought about converting control orders into what are now called TPIMs, with a diluted set of powers."
Lord West, a former first sea lord and security minister under Gordon Brown, said: "The communications data bill is absolutely crucial. We may find the information we need on these mobiles is not there. It was meant to be in the Queen's speech. David Cameron and the home secretary both quite rightly wanted it, but the deputy prime minister said no and that is putting the country at risk.
"They need to look again at the bill, which has a lot of changes to stop it being a snoopers' charter. This ability is something that exists now, and will disappear. I have no doubt that if it goes we will be more at risk, so the deputy prime minister is, I believe, putting the country at risk."
The former Labour home secretary Jack Straw called for the intelligence and security committee to inquire into whether the communications bill was needed in light of the attack.
He said: "We need to know whether it would have made any difference. I don't know. I don't think John Reid knows. You have got to make sure that the proposals are proportionate".
He said the murder was an act of "stone-age savagery".
Asked whether the government may respond to the Woolwich killing by resurrecting the communications data bill, the faith and communities minister, Baroness Warsi, told BBC Radio 4's World at One: "I'm sure people will analyse how things could be done better and I'm sure people will have a lessons-learnt exercise.
"But I think the wrong way to make legislation is on the back of a tragedy like this. It isn't the moment to start looking at the kind of legislation we should or should not have. I'm sure at some point it will play into the debate."
There was no immediate response from the Liberal Democrats, but Clegg's officials had previously said they were willing to look at some residual changes to make sure all mobiles were linked to IP addresses. It was not clear whether this required primary legislation.
Currently, police can identify who has made a telephone call or sent an SMS text message, and when and where. However, they cannot do the same for email, internet telephony, instant messaging or other internet-based services because communications service providers don't retain all of the relevant data.
Notes attached to the Queen's speech hinted that the security services still had ambitions to extend the willingness of the Liberal Democrats to link mobiles to internet providers. The notes said: "When communicating over the internet, people are allocated an IP address. However, these addresses are generally shared between a number of people.
"In order to know who has actually sent an email or made a Skype call, the police need to know who used a certain IP address at a given point in time. Without this, if a suspect used the internet to communicate instead of making a phone call, it may not be possible for the police to identify them."
The government said it was looking at ways of addressing the issue with service providers and that this may involve new legislation.
- Woolwich attack
- Crime
- London
- Data protection
- Data and computer security
- Nick Clegg
- Liberal Democrats
- Labour
- Conservatives
- Privacy
- Internet
- Theresa May
- Jack Straw
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Does Kim Dotcom have original 'two-factor' login patent?
Owner of Mega and MegaUpload sites fighting US extradition says Google and others should help his defence fund in return for using his patent, but earlier filings cast doubt on claim
Kim Dotcom, the New Zealand-based creator of the MegaUpload file-sharing site who is fighting an extradition demand from the US, is asking Google, Microsoft and others to contribute to his multimillion-dollar defence fund in return for a licence he claims to hold on a key patent.
However it has emerged that the patent is not valid in Europe, having been cancelled in Europe in 2011 following opposition from Ericsson, which holds a prior patent.
Dotcom, 39, said on Twitter on Thursday that he has a patent on "two-factor authentication", used by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Twitter, Dropbox and others to provide extra safety on user accounts. The patent was filed in 1998 under his former name of "Kim Schmitz". He also issued a veiled threat to sue the companies if they don't help.
However patent filings seen by the Guardian suggest that Dotcom's claim is predated by others filed by telecommunications companies Ericsson and Nokia in 1994 in the US, Europe, China and through the international patent system.
Under the patent system, earlier filings take precedence in any claim, which would rule Dotcom's patent invalid unless he can show that it covers elements of authentication which are not covered by the earlier one. Dotcom had not responded to an email from the Guardian raising this point by the time of publication.
Dotcom said that he would allow Google, Facebook and others to use his patent for free. "I ask you for help," he tweeted. "We are all in the same DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] boat. Use my patent for free. But please help funding my defense."
He has claimed that the costs of his legal defence, which has been going since a raid by police in January 2012 which saw him imprisoned pending an extradition hearing, have reached $62m. He is presently on bail. Dotcom has previous convictions under the name of Schmitz in Germany for computer fraud and separately for embezzlement relating to insider trading, and in Hong Kong for securities-related offences.
The patent awarded in 1998 by the US Patent Office appears to be the only one Schmitz holds. On his Twitter feed, he said: "Big reveal: 1 billion+ two-step authentications on the internet weekly. I invented it. Here's proof", linking to the patent filing. He then added: "I never sued them. I believe in sharing knowledge & ideas for the good of society. But I might sue them now 'cause of what the US did to me."
However it is difficult to say whether such a claim would succeed. The Ericsson patent from 1994 describes "a method and an apparatus for authentication of a user attempting to access an electronic service, and, in particular, providing an authentication unit which is separate from preexisting systems."
That fits as a description of two-factor authentication, which typically uses a combination of a password typed into a browser with a code received by text message or from an app to authorise the user's access.
Update: Emily Weal at the IPCopy site points out that
A look at the EPO register for the equivalent European patent reveals that the European patent was granted, but subsequently opposed and then revoked in its entirety in 2011.
The key prior art document in the opposition was EP0745961, owned by AT&T, with an earlier priority date of 31 May 1995. Interestingly, AT&T's US equivalent US5708422 is granted, and still appears to be in force.
In the view of the EPO's opposition division then, Kim Dotcom's patent is not valid, and while Kim Dotcom may indeed have developed two-factor authentication himself, he was not the first inventor, having been pipped at the post (by a good 2 years!) by someone else.
Charles Arthurguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
YouTube Comedy Week, day four: Crabstickz, the Gregory Brothers and Psy
YCW continues to struggle for belly laughs on day four, with the Gregory Brothers' DJ Play My Song the pick of a tepid bunch
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You can't accuse YouTube Comedy Week of elitism. It's not all about the big names; it's giving web-based comic talent a great opportunity to get their work seen by an (even) wider audience. So how are they doing? On the evidence of today's crop of Comedy Week videos, not particularly well. YouTube's official comedy channel brings us a series of amusing enough sketches about a nuclear family carping at one another across the dinner table. The first episode is here.
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Elsewhere, the British performer Chris Kendall, aka Crabstickz, chooses to commemorate Comedy Week by aping the most tired of old-media formats, the TV panel show. Worst of all, the US duo Rhett and Link have uploaded their YouTube Challenge Challenge, which invites a crowd of YouTube users to undertake mildly unpleasant stunts – eating cinnamon; singing with a mouthful of marshmallows – for the edification, or amusement, of … well, who knows?
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Comedy Week also brings us a live show from the American improv troupe Upright Citizens Brigade, in which sketch comedy is created and performed on the hoof in response to screened YouTube videos. A comedian and actor from the US version of The Office, Craig Robinson, gatecrashes a nail salon to serenade the clientele here, and the double act Tim and Eric perform a comic song about goatee beards here. They're passably engaging, but you'd be hard pushed to argue for the comic sophistication of either video. Best of a so-so crop is the Gregory Brothers' number, DJ Play My Song, a spoof dancefloor anthem in which a DJ finds a gyrating diva's attentions increasingly unwelcome. ("Oh, DJ, play your song now" / "No, leave me alone.") The video features Psy. Maybe there's better stuff out there that I haven't found? If so, let me know.
Brian Loganguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
What should I look for when buying a desktop PC?
Gill needs to replace an old Dell desktop and wants to know what she should know about them …
I need to replace an old Dell desktop and have no idea what I should buy. I don't use it for gaming. I do use it to watch some TV via an HDMI cable to my TV and I might want to download films. It's mainly used for photos, web browsing and emails. What sort of things should I be aware of?
Gill
There are at least two interesting types of desktop computer: all-in-ones with touch screens, and high-end gaming rigs. Traditional desktops are boring and almost nobody writes about them. However, in this case, I think boring is best. The ideal desktop is one that keeps on working quietly and reliably for five years or more.
Almost any desktop PC that you can find will do what you want, so the final choice will depend on how much space you have, and how much you want to spend. I budget £1 a day and aim to spend around £1,000, including monitor, but you could easily spend half of that.
Most desktop PCs come in tower cases of various sizes. If you want to add expansion cards and extra hard drives, then it helps to have a large case. If you're never going to open it up and add to it, a mini-tower (MT) or small form factor (SFF) case will be fine.
Most desktop PCs come with a built-in DVD optical drive that will also read and write CDs. If you want to play Blu-ray movies as well, then you will need to specify a Blu-ray drive.
It's also handy to have a built-in multi-card reader that will read SD memory cards from cameras, voice recorders and other devices. These are the modern equivalent of floppy disks, if anyone remembers those.
For internal storage, you will also need a hard drive. Check the size of the one in your current PC by opening Windows Explorer, selecting My Computer, and seeing what it says for Local Disk (C:). Make sure the PC you buy has at least twice as much storage space, preferably five times as much. Currently, 1TB (terabyte) drives are cheap and 2TB drives are affordable. You won't need that much unless you want to store lots of movies — probably more than 100, depending on length and resolution. You can always install a second hard drive later, or get a friend to install one for you.
For external connections, it's best to have some USB 3.0 ports, though most desktop PCs also have USB 2.0 ports as well, both front and rear.
Processor and operating systemThe processor and memory are among the most expensive parts of a desktop PC, and they are where you can save some money, if you need to.
Currently, I recommend the Intel Core i5-3570K as the best-value Ivy Bridge chip for someone who might want to overclock it, and the Core i5-3550 for people who don't know what overclocking means. For your purposes, any Core i5-3xxx or Core i3-3xxx processor would be fine. If you're buying for the long term, it's probably not worth dropping down to a Pentium-branded chip. It's nicer to have power to spare.
Intel Core chips now have built-in graphics, which means you don't need to buy a desktop PC with a dedicated graphics card. You can always install a cheap graphics card later, if you find you need one.
Most desktop PCs come with 4GB or memory as standard, and unless you go in for heavyweight tasks such as editing movies, this is enough for Microsoft Windows 7 and 8. More memory is always better, so don't turn away the chance to have more, if the cost is nominal. Desktop PCs with 6GB and 8GB of memory are common.
You will also have to decide whether you want to buy a new screen and/or speakers, or whether you can re-use the ones you already have. If your current screen is less than 20in, it's worth considering a 22in or larger screen, now they are relatively cheap. If you plan to run Windows 8, you should also consider buying a touch-sensitive monitor.
Bear in mind that all versions of Windows support two screens without any problems. You can use the old screen alongside the new one, even if they're different sizes.
Whether to go for Windows 7 or Windows 8 is a matter of some debate. I like Windows 8 a lot on touch-screen tablets and laptops, but I don't use it on my desktops. Play with it in a shop and see how you like it.
Ideally, desktop users who are upgrading from Windows XP and not sure what to do should go for 64-bit Windows 7 Pro with a Windows 8 disk. Basically, you're buying Windows 8 but with downgrade rights that allow you to run Windows 7. The nice thing about the 7 Pro version is that it has an XP Mode that lets you run a copy of XP under Windows 7. It's a bit of a geeky approach but it does enable people to move at their own pace from XP to Windows 7 to Windows 8. Otherwise, the Great Leap Forward can come as a bit of a shock.
Picking a DellAs you're already a Dell user, you may as well stick with the brand. Our last three desktops have all been from Dell, and none of them has given any problems. The Pentium-powered Dell Dimension 8400 I bought in April 2005 is still going strong running Windows XP (with a RAM upgrade and a new graphics card), and I added a Dell Vostro 460MT running Windows 7 on a Core i5-2500 in September 2011.
Dell's Vostro range is aimed at boring business buyers rather than consumers, so they tend to be well made and they don't include a lot of bundled crapware to mess things up. They're not the least bit flash. They also come with one year (sometimes two years) of next-business-day support.
At the moment, you can get a Dell Vostro 470MT with a Core i5-3470 processor, 4GB of memory, Nvidia GeForce GT 620 graphics card, 1TB hard drive, DVD, Wi-Fi and 64-bit Windows 7 Pro for £538.80 including VAT and shipping. It's much more than you need.
However, there's also a similar but smaller and cheaper Vostro 270S (small form factor) for £382.80. This lacks the dedicated graphics card and has Windows 8 Pro pre-installed, but saves you £156.
You could add a standard 23in Dell E2313H 1920 x 1080 (Full HD) monitor with a DVI-D connection, or even an UltraSharp U2312HM, though there are plenty of alternatives on Amazon and similar stores.
If you want to try something that isn't from Dell, the Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 72 offers some good alternatives. Prices range from about £300 to £750, depending on the processor. A model with a Core i5-3470S and a similar spec to the Dell 470 MT will cost about £500.
Lenovo also does a Tiny business desktop PC: tiny by name and by nature.
The trend over the past decade is for people to replace desktops with big notebook PCs. However, a desktop provides a bigger (and often better) screen, is usually faster, more upgradeable, and may be cheaper. It's also better for your health, because using a laptop for long periods is bad for your health. I have the physiotherapy bills to prove it.
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Xbox One: should TV broadcasters be afraid?
Microsoft focused on TV over games as it unveiled its new generation console – and it could threaten rival platforms
Xbox One's voice and gesture-activated TV wizardry is unlikely to leave BSkyB worried about its future. But with big name games and on-demand content Microsoft is aiming to maintain Xbox's appeal in the face of consumers spending increasing amounts of time on their tablets and smartphones.
Microsoft has not given its Xbox console a major revamp since 2005; in the interim there has been a digital revolution which is having an increasingly big influence on traditional living room entertainment.
The surge of smartphone and tablet usage has given rise to the "second screen" phenomenon – effectively users looking at other content or interacting with social media such as Twitter and Facebook while watching TV – and the promise of internet-enabled smart televisions meant Xbox One had to be more than just a games console to compete.
Xbox One will allow users to flick instantly between game play and watching TV, or activities such as browsing the internet or Skyping, as well as adding interactivity to programmes, such as fantasy football elements to live NFL matches.
"The key innovation is the overlay with live TV," says Piers Harding-Rolls, games analyst at research firm IHS. "It is all about maintaining Xbox's relevance and keeping it at the centre of entertainment by offering lots of games, content and channels. In some ways it is a defensive perimeter because Microsoft, and Sony, need to stop encroachment in the TV entertainment space."
He points to "ecosystem companies" such as Google, Apple and Amazon which offer products and content across a prolific range of devices, all of which could eventually damage Xbox's core gaming business by taking a growing slice of people's spend home entertainment time.
According to data from the BBC in March 8 million requests for TV shows on the iPlayer video catchup service came from people using games consoles, with pretty much zero growth in usage in the past year.
This compares with 81 million programme requests via mobiles and tablets in March, with portable devices growing rapidly from 15% to 30% of all iPlayer usage in the last year.
IHS estimates there were 47m smartphones and 11m tablets in the UK at the end of last year, compared with 8.2m Xbox 360s.
"Smartphones and tablets are increasingly used for viewing – they are good for catchup content and video delivery. All this eats into [Xbox] play time and usage time on TV," said Harding-Rolls.
While Xbox is aiming to be the gateway point for access to TV, analysts do not consider it to be a threat to broadcasters such as BSkyB.
Microsoft may have announced a big budget programming initiative with Steven Spielberg's TV series based on the Halo game, but it is considered to be more of a PR stunt to appeal to gamers than the first salvo in the battle to become a major TV content producer and rights owner.
"What Microsoft is doing there around creating exclusive interactive content is very interesting and certainly a draw for consumers," says IHS TV analyst Richard Broughton. "Unless Microsoft decides to take a big step and buys exclusive rights, which at this stage would be a risky bet and very territory-specific, it will be playing an aggregation role."
In the UK the Xbox Live service has content from more than 20 content providers including Sky, the BBC's iPlayer, LoveFilm, music video service Vevo and Channel 4's 4oD.
By beefing up the XBox Microsoft is also aiming to head off the growing threat of smart TV manufacturers like Samsung aiming to be the gateway for internet and linear content, as well as the threat of cheap rivals such as Android-based TV-meets-gaming console Ouya.
Analysts concur that for all Microsoft's talk of a making the Xbox One an "all-in-one" entertainment device it still boils down to one thing: games.
With a rumoured price of $400 (£265) in the US, and online games and technology store Zavvi in the UK offering a pre-order price of £400, the Xbox One is considered too pricey to appeal to a mass audience beyond its gaming heartland.
"At the price they are asking the TV elements are not enough to convince a mass audience to buy into it," said Harding-Rolls. "It all comes down to high-end games – smartphones and tablets can't replicate them, they are its strongest selling point."
Microsoft is expected to make major announcements about its games lineup at the E3 trade show in the coming weeks.
"Xbox has gone for a sophisticated approach – it won't be bringing out another Xbox for maybe 10 years and it has to be prepared," says Heloise Thomson, a digital analyst at Enders. "It is about how they can make money subsequently, from selling content through the Xbox Live service and building usage. It will come down to games."
Mark Sweneyguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Woolwich attack: Is your mum a badass too?
#MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass – how about yours? A son's pride in his mother's levelheaded bravery spawned a Twitter hashtag that allowed us all to brag about our cool mums
The son of the woman who spoke to the attackers in Woolwich has inadvertently spawned a Twitter meme: #MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass. Ingrid Loyau-Kennett was one of several women who spoke to the terrorists or attended the body of the victim (another woman pushed past, apparently oblivious, with heavy shopping). Loyau-Kennett spoke to the two men moments after the attack. She told the Guardian: "I was not scared because he was not drunk, he was not on drugs. He was normal. I could speak to him and he wanted to speak and that's what we did."
Basil Baradaran spotted his mum's act of bravery on yesterday's evening news. He tweeted a photo of her standing face-to-face with one of the men, while a nervous crowd waits at the far end of the road:
Of all the things today 'I didn't expect a suspected terror attack in my town and my mum, of all people, to talk to the attackers #Woolwich
– Basil Baradaran (@SiibillamLaw) May 22, 2013
My mum is a motherfucking badass twitter.com/SiibillamLaw/s…
– Basil Baradaran (@SiibillamLaw) May 22, 2013
He was soon inundated with requests from journalists. Then, early this morning, Lauren Laverne spotted his tweet and realised it had the potential to be something more:
I do feel like we all might contribute to @siibillamlaw's hashtag. #MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass
– Lauren Laverne (@laurenlaverne) May 23, 2013
I'll start: She went from Penywell Estate to Greenham Common, via a short career as a casino dancer. #MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass
– Lauren Laverne (@laurenlaverne) May 23, 2013
People were quick to leap on board. There were heroic mums:
Mum raised us w/ no money on a council estate but made me believe I could do anything. My PhD is down to her :) #MyMumisAMotherfuckingBadass
– Nice Reminder (@nice_reminder) May 23, 2013
She's the most positive and good natured person I've met despite living with cancer for the third time. #MyMumIsaMotherfuckingBadass
– Joe Parry (@joeparry) May 23, 2013
@laurenlaverne my mum retired, went to help people with leprosy in Darfur.. robbed and shot at by bandits#MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass
– Dave W (@makapala) May 23, 2013
@laurenlaverne She was the1st woman in her military band in the70s. Forced them to acknowledge her brilliance. #mymumisamotherfuckingbadass
– Shelley Jane (@ShelleyJaneT) May 23, 2013
Incidentally, #MyMumISaMotherfuckingBadass - she was the first female mounted police officer in Manchester, and is UK's longest-serving.
– Laura Corcoran (@friskylaura) May 23, 2013
There were mums who are simply lovely:
#MyMumisAMotherfuckingBadass because she says "catch. 27" instead of "catch 22" and I could not love her more for that.
– Red Boots (@redbootsblog) May 23, 2013
My mam didn't realise it was the same George Michael that was in Wham until 1998.#MyMumisAMotherfuckingBadass
– Robin (@robin_darke) May 23, 2013
And there were a fair few mums who just don't give a shit what people think:
Had my sister stolen from her by the state bc she was unmarried. Broke into the orphanage and took her back #MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass
– Colin Beeblebrox (@Quazlor) May 23, 2013
She once egged Margaret Thatcher, and only thought to mention this to me after she died #MyMumIsaMotherfuckingBadass
– Saskia (@Saskiargh) May 23, 2013
From Oldham to Moscow to build computers in the 60s. Now tells 'funny' KGB stories when given Baileys. #MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass
– michelle patel (@mets1977) May 23, 2013
#MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass Age 63 walked 3 miles to see Radiohead. On a Zimmer frame, with advanced Parkinson's disease, 2 nights running.
– Dick Graceless (@DickGraceless) May 23, 2013
#MyMumisaMotherfuckingBadass She was 5 mins late for my christening. Vicar tried to berate her. She told him to stick his font up his arse.
– Nick Pettigrew (@Nick_Pettigrew) May 23, 2013
You can read all the contributions here. There are bound to be plenty more to come.
And if your mum fits the hashtag's description, why not let us know below?
Tom Meltzerguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Amazon licenses fan fiction ebooks
Original authors and their amateur adapters can now jointly 'monetise' the popular spinoffs
George RR Martin hates fan fiction, Anne Rice has banned it, Ursula K Le Guin calls it "an invasion". But a host of authors have signed up to a new programme from Amazon, which encourages any fan who fancies it to write fiction inspired by their worlds, and sell it to readers through the Kindle store.
Amazon announced yesterday that it had secured licences for the bestselling Gossip Girl series by Cecily von Ziegesar, for Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars and for LJ Smith's Vampire Diaries from Alloy Entertainment. The licences will allow fans to publish authorised stories set in the different fictional universes as ebooks for the Kindle, with royalties paid to both the original author and the fan fictioneer.
Amazon said the "Kindle Worlds" project was good for writers because it is "an entirely new way to monetise their valuable franchises [and] it allows them to extend their worlds with new stories and characters and more deeply engage with existing fans".
"Seeing Pretty Little Liars fans adapt and create their own stories is both exciting and flattering and I think what Amazon Publishing is offering through Kindle Worlds is a great way to reward their ingenuity," said Shepard.
A collection of established authors has already begun dabbling in the world of fan fiction via Amazon. "There's probably not an author/fangirl alive who hasn't fantasised about being able to write about her favourite show. The fact that you can earn royalties doing so makes it even better," said romance author Trish Milburn, who has been writing in The Vampire Diaries universe.
Amazon said it planned to announce more fan fiction licences soon. Martin, who has said that "no one gets to abuse the people of Westeros but me", and Le Guin, who describes fan fiction as akin to "strangers coming in and taking over the country I live in, my heartland", are unlikely to be on Amazon's forthcoming list.
Nor is Rice, who has made her feelings on fan fiction clear in the past, writing on her website: "I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes."
Alison Floodguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Shazam redesigns its iPad app with television-tagging in mind
Auto-tagging feature runs in the background to identify shows, ads and music on the second screen
Mobile firm Shazam has revamped and relaunched its iPad app, with a new feature that automatically identifies TV shows, advertisements and music, rather than waiting for people to manually tag them.
The app also sports a redesigned homescreen, makes it easier for people to see what their Facebook friends have been watching and listening to, and plots tag charts on a map of the world to show what's popular in specific continents, countries, regions, cities and towns.
Shazam is working on similar features for an Android tablet app to be released in the coming months, and the new features will also be added to the company's iPhone and Android smartphone apps later this year.
Leading on iPad is a sign of the growth Shazam has seen on Apple's tablet. "We have seen triple-digit growth over the last year for our existing iPad app, even though we haven't really aggressively promoted it," Shazam's executive vice president of marketing, David Jones, tells The Guardian.
Across all platforms, Shazam's apps have been used by 300m people since the service launched in 2002, with 200m of those having used it in the last year according to Jones. The company recently announced that it currently has more than 60m monthly active users.
Jones cites recent research by NPD Group in the US on the growth of people using second screens while watching TV. The survey of 3,387 people found 87% saying they used at least one second-screen device while watching TV, with 49% of them reporting usage of a tablet – versus 55% for smartphones and 50% for computers.
The auto-tagging feature is a significant step forward for Shazam. Capable of running in the background while people are using other apps on their iPads, it will identify music, shows and ads and make their details available in an in-app carousel.
"We've been testing it extensively to see if it drains the battery when running in the background, but the iPad can go for a couple of days with this running," says Jones. "It doesn't change your charging behaviour – how often you have to plug in – which is very important."
There will be differences in the way Shazam's app works around the world. In the US, Shazam identifies shows on any TV channel, whereas elsewhere it remains limited to those where a deal exists between the broadcaster and Shazam – the Brit Awards earlier in 2013, for example.
"For the time being it's select television shows in the UK, but over time we want to expand that to every channel," says Jones.
"Music is still our bread and butter, but more than 10m people have Shazammed television in the last year. Those are real and meaningful numbers for networks, brands and advertising agencies."
The auto-tagging feature does raise some questions for those kinds of companies, though. With manual tagging, people are actively using Shazam to find out what a song is, or to interact with a show or ad. With passive auto-tagging, Shazam will be capturing data on content they may not be interested in.
"We've thought long and hard about that," says Jones. "If you open or favourite a piece of content that's in the carousel, we're going to consider that a tag: a piece of content of interest. If the device just auto-tags it and it stays unopened, we'll treat it as something that wasn't of interest to you."
There are more interesting implications around the idea of an app that automatically identifies and stores every show someone watches on TV, both for the way TV audiences are measured, and for the privacy of TV viewers.
Shazam seems alive to both of these. "We're not trying to do anything like audience measurement on a grand scale across our user base. We're only interested in what our consumers actually engage in, not what auto-tagging may pick up around you," says JOnes.
"We're already sitting on a goldmine of data, and we're being respectful and thoughtful about how we monetise that."
Jones is enthusiastic about the creative possibilities for brands and their agencies within Shazam's iPad app, and tablets more generally, with second-screen marketing campaigns.
"We think of iPad as just a bigger canvas for our brands and agency partners to paint on," he says. "If you think about making a television advert interactive, it's wonderful to be able to do it on a smartphone, but even better to do it on a bigger 10-inch iPad or seven-inch iPad mini."
The iPad app's relaunch comes during a busy year for Shazam as it ramps up its TV business. The company appointed a new chief executive, Rich Riley, in April, shortly after poaching BBC iPlayer boss Daniel Danker for a role as chief product officer.
Former chief executive Andrew Fisher remains with Shazam in a role as executive chairman, tasked with plotting the company's path to an IPO. In its last full financial year, which ended in June 2012, Shazam's revenues rose 39.8% year-on-year to £21.8m, but its net losses grew from £619k to £3.3m.
Stuart Dredgeguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Facebook's violently sexist pages are an opportunity for feminists | Emer O'Toole
Facebook both reflects our misogynistic society and is a conduit to change it – through campaigns such as Twitter's #FBrape
There's all sorts of stuff wrong with capitalism, but one thing I'd miss if I woke up in an economic utopia tomorrow is a good boycott. Offended by something racist, homophobic, classist or sexist about a company's product or advertising? Boycott. Tell the company why you're boycotting. Encourage others to boycott. If enough people agree with you, companies change the way they behave. Yay! If only there were as straightforward a way to react to ALL the racist, homophobic, classist, sexist arsery one encounters daily. But it's hard to boycott society (though God knows there are times I try).
Then there's Facebook. Facebook is a special case. On the one hand, it's a profit-driven corporation, but on the other, it's a corporation that makes its profits through provision of a platform for people's interests, beliefs and social habits. And when it stops being that platform, it stops making money. Sadly, we live in a society in which many people are interested in rape jokes, believe violence against women is funny and habitually consume cultural products that depict women as glossy sex things. And so, Facebook is full of pages and groups that graphically depict and explicitly condone violence against women.
As Tuesday's open letter to Facebook on behalf of more than 65 gender equality groups points out, Facebook routinely removes content that is violently racist, homophobic or Islamophobic. The company – quite rightly – would ban a group that showed two gay people lying unconscious at the bottom of the stairs with a caption like, "Next time, don't hold hands". While it'll approve content that condones tying women up and raping them, it certainly wouldn't tolerate an equally "humorous" page that riffed on the lynching of black people.
In spite of complaint after complaint, Facebook continues to deem content encouraging violence against women inoffensive. When journalists publicise a particularly indefensible page (usually a page that Facebook has already been made aware of by users), the company tends to act by shutting down that particular page. Without protocols in place to combat gender hate speech, however, this is pointless.
The question that arises is why Facebook continues to allow this kind of content to be published. It emits unconvincing chirps about being anti-censorship, but trips itself up by moderating, as pornographic, images of women breastfeeding, or body-positive pictures of post-mastectomy female torsos. This blogpost cuts wittily to the heart of the issue. The author lifts a typical porny pic from another Facebook page, Photoshops in a smattering of pubic hair, and posts it to her own group. Result? Overnight decision – a 30-day ban.
So, the censorship explanation falls flat as a beautifully tattooed post-mastectomy chest, and the question remains: why is Facebook so committed to supporting gender hate speech? One possible explanation is that its company culture has naturalised sexist norms to the point where its members truly believe, along with the creators and users of pages such as Raping Your Girlfriend, that violently misogynistic content is acceptable and funny. At base, there's little difference between classing these pages as inoffensive humour and saying: "Lighten up babe – some women can take a joke. Do you know what would sort you out? A good raping – ha ha."
But Facebook has a brand and has money to make. The #FBrape Twitter campaign is hitting where it hurts, by tweeting big advertisers with screengrabs of their carefully cultivated logos floating alongside pages entitled things such as What's 10 Inches Long and Makes Girls Have Sex With Me – My Knife! So far, many companies have responded quickly and publicly by condemning the content and complaining to Facebook about it. According to Laura Bates of Everyday Sexism, the #FBrape campaign's next challenge must be making these advertisers aware of the history of this issue – of how policy change, rather than moderation of publicised, isolated incidents – is needed.
The #FBrape campaign holds a mirror up to a pervasive element of our culture that many either fail to acknowledge or aggressively insist that feminists laugh off. Officially, violent misogyny is not condoned, and most corporations won't endanger their brands by being associated with it. Unofficially, violent misogyny is still very much de rigueur. Facebook is a conduit between these official and unofficial attitudes to women and, as such, provides an opportunity for radical intervention. Paradoxically, as a profit-driven organisation that must reflect the values of our sexist society, Facebook offers gender activists a vital chance to confront, contest and change permissive attitudes to violence against women.
Emer O'Tooleguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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