Tech Digest daily roundup: 2 in 3 children have seen harmful content online


The UK’s communications regulator is calling on young people to help protect each other by reporting harmful content online. Ofcom says two-thirds of youngsters aged between 13 and 17 see harmful content online but only 16% report it. As it waits for the government’s Online Safety Bill to go through parliament, it has called on young people to help tackle online harms themselves. At Soap Box Youth Centre in Islington, north London, Sky News met a group of young people all involved in digital creation. Within seconds of going on their social media platforms, harmful content appears: a racist post about ‘white power’; critical messages about body image; fake promises; disinformation and a video of police brutally arresting a 16-year-old. Sky News 

Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Pro M2 base model appears to have slower SSD speeds than its M1 predecessor. MacRumors reports that YouTubers Max Tech and Created Tech have both tested the 256GB base M2 model and discovered the SSD’s read speeds are around 50 precent slower than the M1 MacBook Pro with 256GB of storage. Write speeds are reportedly around 30 percent slower. Testing was completed using Blackmagic’s Disk Speed Test app, and Max Tech even disassembled the 13-inch M2 MacBook Pro and found that Apple is only using a single NAND flash storage chip. The M1 MacBook Pro uses two 128GB NAND chips, and multiple chips can enable faster SSD speeds in parallel. The Verge

 

Finally, we have a proper Nintendo Direct set in the schedule for tomorrow. Tune in at 2pm UK time for an announcement show lasting 25 minutes, focused on third-party games. Expect a look at Switch games made by companies other than Nintendo – so, no hoping for Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 news here. A previous rumour with word of tomorrow’s showcase suggested we’d see the Persona franchise represented, as well as the possibility of Red Dead Redemption 2. Eurogamer

Russian hacker group Killnet claimed responsibility on Monday for a DDOS cyber attack on Lithuania, saying it was in response to Vilnius’s decision to block the transit of goods sanctioned by the European Union to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. “The attack will continue until Lithuania lifts the blockade,” a spokesperson for the Killnet group told Reuters. “We have demolished 1652 web resources. And that’s just so far.” Reuters 

The company planning to buy Donald Trump’s new social media business has disclosed a federal grand jury investigation that it says could impede or even prevent its acquisition of the Truth Social app. Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp. dropped 10% in morning trading Monday as the company revealed that it has received subpoenas from a grand jury in New York. The Justice Department subpoenas follow an ongoing probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission into whether Digital World broke rules by having substantial talks about buying Trump’s company starting early last year before Digital World sold stock to the public for the first time in September, just weeks before its announcement that it would be buying Trump’s company. AP News

Chris Price