Britains Prime MinisterBoris Johnson has admitted that his government didnt understand the nature of the coronavirus pandemic in its first few weeks and months. Speaking exclusively to the bbc mr johnson also said there were open questions about whether the lockdown had been imposed too late. Authorities in iraq have created a city in the desert to bury the Record Number of people who have died from coronavirus there. Doctors haveissued from coronavirus there. Doctors have issued a stark warning that returning to normal life would be premature, as covid cases continue to soar. And daily black lives matter protest in brazil are continuing in the wake of George Floyds death in Police Custody in the us city of many applets. Demonstrators say they wa nt to applets. Demonstrators say they want to see changes there in policing, deployment and housing. Those are the latest headlines from bbc news. Now on bbc news its
time for click. This week, hate for sale. The ultraviolet cleaning squad. And halo, will you be joining team xbox . Hey, welcome to click. Now, as more and more places start to open up here in the uk there are some people who are starting to think about whether travelling or going abroad for a Summer Holiday is a possibility. And is safe. And thats why today, lara is not at home, she is at an airport. Yes, thats right. Im not going any further
than heathrow airport, though. I have to say it is amazingly quiet, here. Wow, so what are you up to, then . Weve been given some behind the scenes access to take a look at some of the technology that is being used to help keep the airport covid safe. 0k, well have more on that later in the programme, so see you in a bit. First we are going to return to something we often talk about on this programme, the battle that social Media Companies are fighting against extremist content and hate speech. Normally Companies Like facebook, twitter, and more recently tiktok are the ones making the headlines, but there are other outlets for extreme views, too. For example, it is totally possible to buy racist and far right products from some of the worlds Biggest Online retailers. James clayton has been investigating. Its a sad reality that racism is alive and well online, but it might surprise you that some of the Biggest Companies in the world are selling racist
material and products online. Our investigation has also found that online retailers own algorithms often promote racist products which they are then benefiting from financially. To the degree that algorithms can learn, they can also be taught to be more responsible, otherwise these companies essentially just throw their hands in the air and say yes, we are going to make it easier for you to be an extremist. The black lives Matter Movement has been an awakening for many, notjust people but companies too. After George Floyds death, chief executive after chief executive stood up and declared themselves and their organisations behind the movement, including amazons jeff bezos and googles sundar pichai. But have these companies been practising what they preach . I wanted to find out, so i decided to do some online shopping. First up, the undisputed heavyweight of online retail, amazon. You may be surprised to see that white power flags are being sold on the platform. Theyre not called white supremacist flags, but, if you reverse Google Search it, you will see that they definitely are. Now, i am a tech reporter, im not an expert in neo nazi flags. But, when i clicked on that flag, something caught my eye. In the frequently bought together box, amazon was suggesting another flag with a symbol id never seen before. I so i decided to look it up, and, yeah, its another neo nazi flag. Amazon was suggesting to me, content, neo nazi content, that i didnt even know existed. And if i click on that nazi flag, i get more
nazi stuff suggested too. Some of the comments on these flags are pretty critical. Disgusted, writes one shopper. This is a neo nazi flag, says another. But others are very happy. This person says that the flag would be great for use in parades, and thanks amazon for making it happen. So, next time you see a far right march, and you see flags on display, it is possible that they were bought on amazon. Amazon may have profited from them. The weirdest part about this is how easy it is to land on white supremacist material, without me ever having typed in anything to do with white supremacy. We need to demand that the companies that are providing these algorithms dontjust sort of say its the algorithms fault, its not our fault, they need to constantly be on top of, what is their algorithm recommending, and making sure that they are fine tuning it so that people cannot game the system or, worse yet, that somebody who is just on the periphery of some
extremist movement doesnt get deeper into that movement and its subculture because the algorithm took them there. These symbols matter. They are the emblems of the extremist, racist far right. The christchurch shooter, for example, wore these two symbols. Theres lots more i could show you on amazon, but lets take another example, this time, the kkk, the ku klux klan, from another online retailer, wish. Now, wish doesnt have any explicit kkk merchandise but it does have this old 1960s cartoon. However, if i click on related items suddenly im offered a load of things that are associated with the kkk. In fact, the first two items suggested are a hood and a white power sticker. There also suggestions for neo nazi flags, white power rings, etc, etc. The algorithm thinks that im interested in white supremacy
and so thats what its offering me, and theres more. The far right extremist movement, the boogaloo boys, is banned on facebook. Members of the movement have been charged with terrorism offences. One man has been accused of killing state officials. Type boogaloo into wish, however, and you get a load of military equipment. The military equipment itself isnt labelled as boogaloo, but the algorithm thinks thats what you might be interested in. It wasnt just this. All three online retailers we looked at, amazon, google and wish, all had boogaloo content for sale. Despite them being banned on other platforms. All three have now taken down those products. On google, too, we found racist literature for sale. Now, we thought about this and decided not to show it to you. Heres what the companies told us. First off, amazon removed everything that we showed them. They said. Google, too, removed everything we showed them, saying. And wish told us. Its notjust these companies we could have focused on. Many other online retailers also have problematic products for sale. The big question now is, what should and shouldnt stay up, and how can companies moderate their platforms so that they dont profit from hate . Wow, well, that was james clayton, who is with me now online. James, i got the feeling that these items were only taken down when you notified these platforms. Do you think they really are actively hunting for offensive items . Thats the Million Dollar question. In a way, there is no way of knowing, because they wouldnt actively advertise every time they took something down. When you do approach these companies and say, look, this is the kind of thing that you are either selling or you have on your platform, they say, oh, we didnt realise, we will take it down straightaway. But theres clearly an issue there, around how they moderate the platform. No matter how many human moderators you throw at a platform, itsjust numerically impossible to take down the amount of content that they would need to. There is one crucial difference with this. Than facebook and twitter. Because facebook have, as they always say, billions and billions of posts they have to deal with, whereas when you are actually an online retailer, the amount of products that you are actually selling is way fewer. So, that defence doesnt quite work when it comes to online retail. I guess this is just another example of the algorithm doing theirjob, and doing them well. The company is actively promoting other racist stuff. The algorithm knows that lots of people who type in boogaloo, are interested in military stuff, and so it promotes and suggests military equipment. Others might say its not a particularly smart move to suggest military equipment to an organisation that has links to the extreme right and to terrorist offences. Some of the items and symbols are not just racist, they have been appropriated. Right, the swastika was and still is a hindu sign, and a lot of these new neo nazi signs are old pagan signs. This is why the algorithms so important, because if you are typing in kkk or white supremacy, its pretty clear what youre searching for. Are they platforms . Are they publishers . How much responsibility do they want to take . You could argue that amazon could say look, we are libertarians, we think that we should sell everything. We dont make judgment calls on that. But, when amazon comes out and supports black lives matter, at that point, they do have a value system, and i think the big question here is, is supporting black lives matter and having this kind of product for sale, are they compatible . James, fascinating stuff. Thanks for doing that report for us. Hello and welcome to the week in tech. It was the week twitter announced plans to ban and suspend accounts linked to the Conspiracy Theory qanon who supporters believe there are people plotting against the president of the usa. Campaigners suggested that the test entries programme in the uk breaks gdp are data rules as it was lodged without carrying out an assessment of its effect on privacy. The uk government so on privacy. The uk government so there was no evidence of data being used unlawfully. Spot a pie has launched podcasts and video. It is only with a selection with of new podcasts for now and apple has announced plans for the tech giantand announced plans for the tech giant and its entire supply chain to become Carbon Neutral from 2030. Those of you with a craving for fancy futuristic food with a smaller carbon impact than the original, the bacon and pork belly in this sandwich isnt from a living pig sandwich isnt from a living pig. The meat was grown in a lab. The creators, high estate say that it is the first to produce a ladder and talk from 50 cultivated cells. And what do you get if you cross a Machine Learning and thermal cameras . Thats right, a virtual hand. Researchers at Cornell University have designed a wrist mounted device that continuously tracks the entire human hand in 3d, as well as vr and human computer interfacing, it could be used in Sign Language translation. Googles pixel buds have finally come to the uk this week, nine months after they were first announced. So, so ive been seeing how they stack up next to some other big brand wireless earphones. Of course, the apple airpods pro and the snappily titled sony wf1000 xm3s. I am wearing the pixel buds now, and google has designed them to lie flat within your ears, so they have a low profile, which i appreciate, because you dont catch them if you are taking off your shirt or if you are wearing a hat. All three of these come with a case that recharges your earbuds. Googles is designed to look like a stone, which is very nice, and it fits in that tiny extra pocket in your genes. Jeans. Sonys case is the outlier, because its comparatively huge. Im not a big fan of this rose gold effect lid, because the paint has started to chip off. The big question of course is, how do they sound . I was never the sort of person to spend about £200 on a pair of headphones. Until about two years ago my boss convinced me to buy these, because the audio quality
and the Noise Cancellation were outstanding. And i never regretted it, because i wore them every day on the way to work, on flights, things like that. And the sony in ear buds come fairly close to that sound quality. When i got the airpods pro, i was disappointed, because they cost more than any of these other headphones. But they just didnt sound as good. Everything sounded a little bit duller. The pixel buds probably ran somewhere in between in terms of audio richness, but there is a problem with these. Whatever im listening to, whether its spoken word or music, there is a low level quiet hissing noise the entire time, almost like you are listening to songs on a cassette tape rather than a clean digital copy. And its most noticeable if you are listening to music in bed at low volume. Not everyone can hear it. My housemate couldnt hear the hissing noise but i could, and so could lots of other people complaining on the google message boards. For a sound product, thats a fundamental problem. Another weird thing about the pixel buds is that they dont have Noise Cancellation, and the sony and airpods pro both have
really good noise cancelling for something so small. The pixel buds are at the end of the price scale where you would expect to have it. Here is a quick look at some of the other features. The sonys come out top for battery life, and ive never had a problem with any of these running out, because they all recharge when you put them back in the case, the pixel buds and airpods pro have the added bonus of a Wireless Charging case, and both of them are also sweat resistant, while the sonys are not, although i used to wear them at the gym all the time, and they havent broken yet. One little thing im really glad that the pixel buds get right is that they play a low battery noise at the same volume as the music youve been listening to, which is really important if you are trying to fall asleep. For some reason i cannot understand, the airpods pro play a really loud low battery noise, even if you are playing music at the quietest volume and so many times, ive fallen asleep with these in, and then suddenly. Noise it makes mejump out of my skin every time. Apple, please fix this. But that is a small issue compared to the hissing on the pixel buds. Google says the hissing is rare, and it will fix it with a software update, but these first came out in the us in april and its still not fixed, so i suppose well have to wait and see. After months in isolation the idea of coming to a bustling airport, let alone getting on an actual plane can be slightly unnerving. Here at heathrow things are quieter than usual, but they are doing everything they can to try and make the place covid safe with a fair bit of help from technology. Lets go and take a look. These robots were previously used to kill off hospital acquired infection, but now there is one in each terminal employed to disinfect. Nothing, it is focusing on the most common
touch points. It uses uv light, and viruses dont have the minister and and viruses dont have the ministerand immune and viruses dont have the minister and immune system to uv, so you could say it kills the virus. The only way we could see it working was through the window of this conference room. There is a good reason we couldnt go in, for the first few seconds that it is on the room smells of burning skin, apparently. So, to avoid any nasty burns, it needs to get its work done when no one is around. It is motion and vibration sensors double checking that no one has appeared unexpectedly. But at least it is pretty speedy. In the airport, this robot can disinfect 18,000 square metres ina minimum disinfect 18,000 square metres in a minimum space of two and a half hours. It disinfects, not cleaned, so it is nice to send this into a washroom, disinfect it, then it is safe for the cleaning staff to go in, then they can clean. In an airport it is not just
they can clean. In an airport it is notjust about cleaning overnight. A place like this is usually pretty busy and that means that peoples hands going on the same surface is quite a lot, especially somewhere like an escalator. The solution here could also lie in uv light. This escalator has been retrofitted with one underneath the belt, so it means that every time it goes wrong, it is being sanitised. And the whole route we take through the airport seems to have been carefully considered. Stickers on lift buttons, wrappers on escalator handles, so think about your antibacterial spray but from a virus point of view. You wrap that around the escalator handle and it basically gives you several months of virus retouching, and what we do is we have a technical check that we can make, our biotech dishes do this on a regular basis to see what the viral load is on those touch points, they can make sure that that wrapper is working and fully functioning. It is used in a number of
different places. We have them on lift buttons, escalators and also importantly on trolley handles. There is also a mandatory mask wearing, and other safety features are being trialled, like this camera detection system tracking peoples temperatures. The only thing that seems to be missing right now is somewhat unsurprisingly, the passengers. Thats really interesting stuff. I suppose the big question is, with all of that make you feel safer about flying . Exactly. It would certainly make me feel safer about being in the airport, but then i got to get on the flight, then i got to get on the flight, and you could think about using some of these technologies on a plane, obviously before the passengers got down, but you still dont wa nt to got down, but you still dont want to be sitting next to someone want to be sitting next to someone who has got coronavirus. Good point. Cheers, mate. We will see you ina bit. Cheers, mate. We will see you in a bit. Now, are you counting down to the next generation of video games consoles and will
you be team xbox or Team Playstation . That decision often rests on the exclusive games and franchises that each offers. The sony line up for the pss offers. The sony line up for the ps5 has written received universal acclaim from the Gaming Community but nothing xbox has revealed has set pulses racing but all that could be about to change, thanks to the biggest franchise xbox has, halo. Halo hero the master chief is xboxs not so secret weapon in the next generation console showdown with playstation. The new game, Halo Infinite has action centred around the master chief, tackling a bad tempered space bad guy who leads the distinctly unfriendly sounding
banished. I sat down with bonnie ross, head of things halo at, and phil spencer of xbox to talk about th