Facebook slow to act on posts celebrating Bondi beach massacre, anti-hate group says

Facebook hosted terrorist propaganda that celebrated the murder of Jews and praised Islamic State, a leading anti-hate group has alleged.The posts included celebrations of the Bondi beach massacre that the Community Security Trust says Facebook has been too slow to take down. The posts were still on Facebook on 16 December, two days after the attack, and received shares and likes.Some accounts are Britain-based and those have been reported to counter-terrorism police in the UK as a matter of urgency.One post shows video of the aftermath of the Bondi beach attack, which was allegedly carried out by a father and son who were IS supporters, and says: “Allah is the greatest and praise to Allah

We must take control of AI now, before it’s too late | Letters

“When the AI bubble bursts, humans will finally have their chance to take back control”, says the headline on Rafael Behr’s article (23 December). I think it’s more likely that when the AI bubble bursts, the creators of the crisis, along with other wealthy economic actors, will be in the rooms with the politicians telling them how to “rescue” us all by transferring wealth in some way from average citizens to the already extremely wealthy. Just like they did during the financial crisis of 2008.We need to be ready with alternative plans. For example, world governments could coordinate to buy, for suitably low prices, majority shares in any crashing tech company that actually produces something useful, ensuring that those shares come with full voting rights

When swiping up doesn’t get you far | Letters

Speaking of odd habits as a result of using technology (Letters, 25 December), I once passed a bus shelter where a mother was waiting with her young child. The shelter had a huge poster of a new mobile phone and the toddler was leaning out of its buggy and desperately swiping the screen of the phone, presumably in the hope of getting cartoons.Ron BaileyNewcastle upon Tyne I read Joanna Rimmer’s letter on this subject and tried to “like” it.Heather BradfordWinchester Which tablet/ebook user hasn’t absentmindedly put their finger on a printed word they don’t know expecting to see the dictionary definition pop up?Tim MartineauWirral, Merseyside I don’t understand why, when reading a physical copy of the Guardian, the page doesn’t scroll when I swipe up. Can this be corrected, please?Geoff Skinner Kensal Green, London I once picked up a pencil to underline something on Wikipedia

Cryptocurrency slump erases 2025 financial gains and Trump-inspired optimism

As 2025 comes to a close, Donald Trump’s favorable approach to cryptocurrency has not proven to be enough to sustain the industry’s gains, once the source of market-wide optimism and enthusiasm. The last few months of the year have seen $1tn in value wiped from the digital asset market, despite bitcoin hitting an all-time-high price of $126,000 on 6 October.The October price peak was short-lived. Bitcoin’s price tumbled just days later after Trump’s announcement of 100% tariffs on China sent shockwaves across the market on 12 October. The crypto market saw $19bn liquidated in 24 hours – the largest liquidation event on record

‘This will be a stressful job’: Sam Altman offers $555k salary to fill most daunting role in AI

The maker of ChatGPT has advertised a $555,000-a-year vacancy with a daunting job description that would cause Superman to take a sharp intake of breath.In what may be close to the impossible job, the “head of preparedness” at OpenAI will be directly responsible for defending against risks from ever more powerful AIs to human mental health, cybersecurity and biological weapons.That is before the successful candidate has to start worrying about the possibility that AIs may soon begin training themselves amid fears from some experts they could “turn against us”.“This will be a stressful job, and you’ll jump into the deep end pretty much immediately,” said Sam Altman, the chief executive of the San Francisco-based organisation, as he launched the hunt to fill “a critical role” to “help the world”.The successful candidate will be responsible for evaluating and mitigating emerging threats and “tracking and preparing for frontier capabilities that create new risks of severe harm”

‘Why should we pay these criminals?’: the hidden world of ransomware negotiations

They call it “stopping the bleeding”: the vital window to prevent an entire database from being ransacked by criminals or a production line grinding to a halt.When a call comes into the cybersecurity firm S-RM, headquartered on Whitechapel High Street in east London, a hacked business or institution may have just minutes to protect themselves.S-RM, which helped a high-profile retail client recover from a Scattered Spider cyber-attack has become a quiet, often word-of-mouth, success.Many of the company’s senior workers are multilingual and have a minimal online footprint, which reveals scant but impressive CVs suggestive of corporate or government intelligence-based careers.S-RM now claims the UK’s largest cyber-incident response team