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Shares in two of China’s biggest online gaming firms have slipped after a state media outlet called them “electronic drugs”.

Tencent and NetEase shares fell more than 10% in early Hong Kong trade before regaining some of those losses.

Investors are increasingly concerned about Beijing cracking down on firms.

In recent months authorities have announced a series of measures to tighten their grip on technology and private education companies.

An article published by the state-run Economic Information Daily said many teenagers had become addicted to online gaming and it was having a negative impact on them. The news outlet is affiliated with the official Xinhua news agency.

The article cited Tencent’s hugely popular game Honor of Kings, saying students were playing it for up to eight hours a day, and asked for more curbs on the industry.

“No industry, no sport, can be allowed to develop in a way that will destroy a generation,” it said before going on to liken online games to “spiritual opium”.

Tencent did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the BBC.

The company also saw its shares fall last week after being ordered to end exclusive music licensing deals with record labels around the world.

The move was aimed at tackling the technology giant’s dominance of online music streaming in the country – it currently controls more than 80% of China’s exclusive music streaming rights after an acquisition in 2016.

Tencent is only one of a number of Chinese companies listed in the US, Hong Kong and mainland China to see shares fall sharply this year as Beijing clamps down on the country’s technology and education industries.

Last week saw shares in Chinese online tutoring firms slump after they were stripped of the ability to make a profit from teaching core subjects in China.

The new guidelines also restricted foreign investment in the industry.

The major shift in policy came as authorities try to ease the financial pressures of raising children.

Officials have been worried after China’s latest census showed that the birth rate had fallen to the lowest in seven decades.

It is one of the biggest ever overhauls of the country’s $120bn (£87bn) private tutoring sector.

Big tech firms are altering their return-to-work plans for employees, as Covid-19 cases rise in the US – with some stipulating that staff working in the office must be vaccinated.

Google announced that it would delay a return to the office until 18 October.

The company joined Facebook in saying it would require US workers returning to the office to be vaccinated.

Twitter said it would pause office re-opening, closing offices in San Francisco and New York once again.

The two Twitter offices had been operating at up to 50% capacity for staff who wanted to return.

In a statement, the company wrote that it was “continuing to closely monitor local conditions and make necessary changes that prioritise the health and safety of our Tweeps”.

Twitter said it remained committed to giving employees the option to work from home where possible.

Other tech firms have also put back, or changed, return-to-work plans

Apple has reportedly delayed a planned return to on-site working until October.

Amazon has previously announced a three-day-a-week return to work for “corporate” staff, in a seeming shift of policy.

It comes as the US administration struggles with flagging rates of vaccination.

President Biden recently ordered two million federal employees to show proof of vaccination or be subject to mandatory testing and mask-wearing.

Some tech firms are now taking a similar stance.

In an email to all employees on Wednesday, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said the firm would extend a global, voluntary, work-from-home policy through to 18 October.

In addition, the email said “anyone coming to work on our campuses will need to be vaccinated”.

The policy will be rolled out in the US, and later expand to other regions.

The Google boss said its implementation of the policy would vary according to local conditions and regulations, and would only apply once vaccines are widely available in an area. More details would be forthcoming about exemptions for medical and other “protected” reasons, he added.

Facebook has also announced that it would “require” US staff returning to offices to be vaccinated.

In a statement, Facebook vice president Lori Goler wrote: “We will have a process for those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons, and will be evaluating our approach in other regions as the situation evolves.

Ms Goler said the company’s return-to-office plans would “prioritise everyone’s health and safety”.

A computer key that can unlock the files of hundreds of companies which were hacked in a large-scale cyber-attack has been obtained.

US IT firm Kaseya – which was the first to be targeted earlier this month – said it got the key from a “trusted third party”.

Ransomware is malicious software that steals computer data and scrambles it so the victim cannot gain access.

The hackers then ask for payment in return for releasing the files.

Kaseya’s decryptor key will allow customers to retrieve missing files, without paying the ransom.

The company’s spokeswoman Dana Liedholm declined to answer whether Kaseya had paid for access to the key.

She told tech blog Bleeping Computer that the firm was actively helping customers restore their files.

The “supply chain” attack initially targeted Kaseya, before spreading through corporate networks which use its software.

Kaseya estimated that between 800 and 1,500 businesses were affected, including 500 Swedish Coop supermarkets and 11 schools in New Zealand.

After the attack at the beginning of July, criminal ransomware gang REvil demanded $70m worth of Bitcoin in return for a key that would unlock the stolen files.

But members of the group disappeared from the internet in the days following the incident, leaving companies with no way of retrieving the data until now.

Who is the mystery gifter?

That’s the big question in the cyber-security world at the moment.

But really it is irrelevant for two reasons.

Firstly, giving away the key now is far too late for most of the victims of this massive ransomware attack.

The most desperate companies would have paid the gang already to get their operations back online, and others would hopefully be on their way to recovering by now without the help of the criminals.

Secondly, the mystery gifter was most probably linked to – or working with – the criminals directly.

It seems improbable that a well-run and experienced cyber-crime group like REvil would have accidentally leaked its most prized possession, or had it taken by some sort of secret law enforcement operation.

I’m told by a hacker who claims to be a part of the inner circle that it was “a trusted partner” who gave the key away on behalf of the group’s leader, who calls himself Unknown.

My contact says it’s all part of “a new beginning”.

So while some are calling this the end of the REvil group, it could well be the start of something else.

Mark Zuckerberg has laid out his vision to transform Facebook from a social media network into a “metaverse company” in the next five years.

A metaverse is an online world where people can game, work and communicate in a virtual environment, often using VR headsets.

The Facebook CEO described it as “an embodied internet where instead of just viewing content – you are in it”.

He told The Verge people shouldn’t live through “small, glowing rectangles”.

“That’s not really how people are made to interact,” he said, speaking of reliance on mobile phones.

“A lot of the meetings that we have today, you’re looking at a grid of faces on a screen. That’s not how we process things either.”

‘Infinite office’
One application of the metaverse he gave was being able to jump virtually into a 3D concert after initially watching on a mobile phone screen.

“You feel present with other people as if you were in other places, having different experiences that you couldn’t necessarily do on a 2D app or webpage, like dancing, for example, or different types of fitness,” he said.

Facebook is also working on an “infinite office” that lets users create their ideal workplace through VR.

“In the future, instead of just doing this over a phone call, you’ll be able to sit as a hologram on my couch, or I’ll be able to sit as a hologram on your couch, and it’ll actually feel like we’re in the same place, even if we’re in different states or hundreds of miles apart,” he said. “I think that is really powerful.”

Facebook has invested heavily in virtual reality, spending $2bn (£1.46bn) on acquiring Oculus, which develops its VR products.

In 2019, it launched Facebook Horizon – an invitation-only immersive environment where users can mingle and chat in a virtual space with a cartoon avatar through Oculus headsets.

Zuckerberg admitted current VR headsets were “a bit clunky” and needed improving for people to work in them all day.

But he argued that Facebook’s metaverse would be “accessible across… different computing platforms” including VR, AR (augmented reality), PC, mobile devices and games consoles.

Metaverse origins
The concept of a metaverse is popular with tech companies who believe it could be a new 3D internet, connecting digital worlds where people hang out in virtual reality.

Its origins come from Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, where it served as a virtual-reality-based successor to the internet.

Tech firms have tried to implement metaverse elements in popular games including Animal Crossing, Fortnite and Roblox.

This includes planning live events such as concerts and tournaments where millions of players can interact from around the globe.

Behavioural data
“Part of the reason Facebook is so heavily invested in VR/AR is that the granularity of data available when users interact on these platforms is an order of magnitude higher than on screen-based media,” Verity McIntosh, a VR expert at the University of the West of England, told the BBC.

“Now it’s not just about where I click and what I choose to share, it’s about where I choose to go, how I stand, what I look at for longest, the subtle ways that I physically move my body and react to certain stimuli. It’s a direct route to my subconscious and that is gold to a data capitalist.

“It seems unlikely that Facebook will have an interest in changing a business model that has served them so well to prioritise user privacy or to give users any meaningful say in how their behavioural data in the ‘metaverse’ will be used.”

Tech giants like Facebook defining and colonising the space, while traditional governance structures struggle to keep up with the technological change could cause further issues, she added.

Shares in Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi slumped by more than 11% in New York on Thursday.

It comes after a report that regulators in Beijing are considering serious penalties for the company.

Didi made its US stock market debut at the end of last month, raising $4.4bn (£3.2bn).

Just two days later, China’s internet regulator launched an investigation into the company over how it collects user data.

The penalties could include fines, suspending some operations or government investment in the company, according to Bloomberg News.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the report said that the company could even be forced to remove its shares from the US stock market.

It added that the punishment is likely to be more serious than a fine imposed on Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba earlier this year.

Alibaba accepted a record $2.8bn fine after an official investigation found that it had abused its market position for years.

Didi says China app removal will affect business
In early July, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) ordered online stores not to offer Didi’s app, saying it illegally collected users’ personal data.

That sent Didi’s share price sharply lower and it has now fallen by more than 27% since making its New York Stock Exchange debut on 30 June.

Didi did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the BBC.

China’s major internet firms have come under increasing scrutiny from Beijing this year.

China’s internet watchdog this week ordered some of the country’s biggest online platforms to remove inappropriate child-related content.

The CAC said Kuaishou, Tencent’s messaging tool QQ, Alibaba’s Taobao and Weibo were fined and told to “rectify” and “clean up” all illegal content.

China’s tech giants fall under regulator’s pressure
Another government agency fined 12 companies over deals that violated anti-monopoly rules.

The companies included Tencent, Baidu, Didi, SoftBank and a ByteDance-backed firm, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said in a statement.

According to state broadcaster CCTV, President Xi Jinping has ordered regulators to step up their oversight of internet companies, crack down on monopolies and promote fair competition.

Spanish police have arrested a 22-year-old UK citizen in connection with the hacking of 130 high-profile Twitter accounts, including those of Elon Musk, Barack Obama and Kanye West.

The hacked accounts tweeted followers, encouraging them to join a Bitcoin scam, in July last year.

Also charged with hacking TikTok and Snapchat, Joseph O’Connor faces charges including three counts of conspiracy to intentionally access a computer without authorisation and obtaining information from a protected computer.

Twitter hack: 130 accounts targeted in attack
Teen ‘mastermind’ pleads guilty to celeb Twitter hack
Twitter hack: What went wrong and why it matters
The San Francisco Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been investigating the case, helped by the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Cyber Crimes Unit and the United States Secret Service.

Previously, authorities had charged three men in relation to the breach, a 19-year-old, from Bognor Regis, another teenager and a 22-year-old from Florida.

Hackers took control of public figures’ accounts and sent a series of tweets asking followers to transfer cryptocurrency to a specific Bitcoin wallet to receive double the money in return.

As a result, Twitter had to stop all verified accounts from tweeting.

The social-media company later said the hackers had targeted Twitter employees to steal credentials to access the systems.

US President Joe Biden has issued a statement clarifying that “Facebook isn’t killing people”, following his earlier criticism.

The president had said “they’re killing people” when asked about Facebook’s role in the Covid pandemic, a comment which made headlines around the world.

But he now says he was referring to leading misinformation spreaders on the platform.

Facebook had fiercely denied any responsibility.

President Biden’s initial remarks were off-the-cuff comments to a reporter, who’d asked about his message to “platforms like Facebook”.

“They’re killing people,” he said. “The only pandemic we have is among the un-vaccinated. And they’re killing people.”

It came on the day the White House press secretary had accused Facebook of not doing enough to combat the spread of misinformation by users.

Mr Biden now says this is what he was referring to – specifically to a recent report about 12 people credited with spreading a vast amount of misinformation.

“Facebook isn’t killing people, these 12 people are out there giving misinformation,” he said. “Anyone listening to it is getting hurt by it. It’s killing people.

“My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally, that somehow I’m saying ‘Facebook is killing people’, that they would do something about the misinformation, the outrageous misinformation about the vaccine,” he said.

“That’s what I meant.”

Mr Biden’s initial quote last week was picked up by news outlets around the world, leading to an unusually strong rebuttal from Facebook.

“We will not be distracted by accusations which aren’t supported by facts,” it said.

“The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives. Period.”

Misinformation on Facebook killing people – Biden
Facebook moderator: ‘Every day was a nightmare’
Facebook adds ‘expert’ feature to groups
The company went as far as releasing a blog post, called Moving Past the Finger Pointing, claiming that Facebook users are more likely to be vaccinated.

“The data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the US have been or want to be vaccinated against Covid-19. President Biden’s goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4,” it wrote.

“Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.”

Facebook continues to face accusations of not doing enough to tackle misinformation.

The report cited by President Biden, originally released in March, suggested that 65% of anti-vaccine posts came from the so-called “disinformation dozen” – 12 people who spread misinformation to millions of other users.

The Center for Countering Digital Hatred (CCDH), which was behind the report, continues to campaign for their removal from both Facebook and Twitter.

A new documentary about Anthony Bourdain has ignited a debate, after film-makers revealed they had used an AI simulation of the late chef’s voice.

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain was narrated using archive material supplemented by a synthetic voice reading short extracts of writing by Mr Bourdain, who died in 2018.

Director Morgan Neville called it a modern storytelling technique.

But some critics questioned whether it was ethical.

Mr Neville said that the synthetic voice was created by feeding more than 10 hours of Mr Bourdain’s voice into a machine-learning system.

“There were a few sentences that [Bourdain] wrote that he never spoke aloud,” he told Variety.

So the computerised voice was used to bring his writing to life.

He said the technique was used in the film with the support of Mr Bourdain’s estate and literary agent.

Mr Bourdain, who took his own life in 2018, was one of America’s best-known celebrity chefs, presenting food and travel programmes and writing a number of best-selling books.

In 2016, he shared a $6 (£4.30) meal with Barack Obama in a small Hanoi restaurant when the then-US president visited Vietnam.

Writing about the artificial voice in the film, the New Yorker’s Helen Rosner noted that the “seamlessness of the effect is eerie”.

Reviewer Sean Burns criticised the unannounced use of what he called a “deepfake” voice.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
View original tweet on Twitter
David Leslie, ethics lead at the Alan Turing Institute, said the issue showed the importance of informing audiences that AI was being used, to prevent people possibly feeling deceived or manipulated.

But he said that although it was a complex issue, the use of AI technology in documentaries should not be ruled out.

“In a world where the living could consent to using AI to reproduce their voices posthumously, and where people were made aware that such a technology was being used, up front and in advance, one could envision that this kind of application might serve useful documentary purposes,” he said.

The BBC has approached the film-makers for comment.

A new documentary about Anthony Bourdain has ignited a debate, after film-makers revealed they had used an AI simulation of the late chef’s voice.

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain was narrated using archive material supplemented by a synthetic voice reading short extracts of writing by Mr Bourdain, who died in 2018.

Director Morgan Neville called it a modern storytelling technique.

But some critics questioned whether it was ethical.

Mr Neville said that the synthetic voice was created by feeding more than 10 hours of Mr Bourdain’s voice into a machine-learning system.

“There were a few sentences that [Bourdain] wrote that he never spoke aloud,” he told Variety.

So the computerised voice was used to bring his writing to life.

He said the technique was used in the film with the support of Mr Bourdain’s estate and literary agent.

Mr Bourdain, who took his own life in 2018, was one of America’s best-known celebrity chefs, presenting food and travel programmes and writing a number of best-selling books.

In 2016, he shared a $6 (£4.30) meal with Barack Obama in a small Hanoi restaurant when the then-US president visited Vietnam.

Writing about the artificial voice in the film, the New Yorker’s Helen Rosner noted that the “seamlessness of the effect is eerie”.

Reviewer Sean Burns criticised the unannounced use of what he called a “deepfake” voice.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.
View original tweet on Twitter
David Leslie, ethics lead at the Alan Turing Institute, said the issue showed the importance of informing audiences that AI was being used, to prevent people possibly feeling deceived or manipulated.

But he said that although it was a complex issue, the use of AI technology in documentaries should not be ruled out.

“In a world where the living could consent to using AI to reproduce their voices posthumously, and where people were made aware that such a technology was being used, up front and in advance, one could envision that this kind of application might serve useful documentary purposes,” he said.

The BBC has approached the film-makers for comment.

New data shows Bitcoin mining in China was already in sharp decline before the latest crackdown by the government.

The research by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) found China’s share of mining fell from 75.5% in September 2019 to 46% in April 2021.

It also revealed Kazakhstan was now the third most significant Bitcoin mining nation.

Miners earn money by creating new Bitcoins, but the computing used consumes large amounts of energy.

They audit Bitcoin transactions in exchange for an opportunity to acquire the digital currency.

Global mining requires enormous computing power, which in turn uses huge amounts of electricity, and consequently contributes significantly to global emissions.

The CCAF’s Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index shows that at time of writing Bitcoin consumed almost as much electricity annually as Colombia.

China moves
In June the Chinese authorities took strong action against Bitcoin.

The authorities told banks and payments platforms to stop supporting digital currency transactions causing prices to tumble.

The data from the CCAF covers a period before the crackdown, but it shows China’s share of global mining power was already in significant decline prior to the action by the Chinese authorities.

The Cambridge researchers observed that the crackdown, once enacted, effectively led to all of China’s mining power “disappearing overnight, suggesting that miners and their equipment are on the move”.

Experts say the miners are highly mobile.

“Miners pack shipping containers with mining rigs”, said David Gerard, author of Attack Of The 50 Foot Blockchain, “so that in effect they are mobile computer data centres, and they are now trying to ship those out of China”.

It’s not clear where they will go, but even before the crackdown the geography of mining was shifting.

Kazakhstan, a country rich in fossil fuels, saw an almost six-fold increase in mining – increasing its share from 1.4% in September 2019 to 8.2% in April 2021.

According to the US Department of Commerce, 87% of Kazakhstan’s electricity “is generated from fossil fuels” with coal accounting for more than 70% of generation.

The country is now the third largest miner of Bitcoins, behind the US, which saw its share of global mining power also rise significantly – to 16.8%.

Raining money
The data also revealed the close ties between sources of cheap electricity and Bitcoin mining.

Researchers found a seasonal movement of mining between Chinese provinces in response, it was suggested, to the availability of hydro-electric power.

Mining moved from the coal-burning northern province of Xinjiang in the dry season, to the hydro-abundant southern province of Sichuan in the rainy season.

The researchers noted that “this seasonal migration has materially affected the energy profile of Bitcoin mining in China”, adding that it illustrated “the complexity of assessing the environmental effects of mining”.

Sichuan banned Bitcoin mining in June.