Technology | The Guardian

When Annabelle Narey posted a negative review of a building firm on Mumsnet, the last thing on her mind was copyright infringementWriting a bad review online has always run a small risk of opening yourself up to a defamation claim. But few would expect to be told that they had to delete their review or face a lawsuit over another part of the law: copyright infringement.Yet that’s what happened to Annabelle Narey after she posted a negative review of a building firm on Mumsnet. Continue reading...

Organised crime believed to be behind coordinated raids across stores in JapanMembers of an international crime syndicate are suspected of stealing more than 1.4bn yen (US$12.7m) from cash machines in Japan in the space of less than three hours, in an audacious heist that involved thousands of coordinated withdrawals.

App-inspired film takes $39m in debut weekend, with young audiences praising movie despite critics’ mixed reviewsThe Angry Birds Movie soared to $39m in its debut weekend at the US box office, knocking Captain America: Civil War off its perch at the top. New adult comedies Neighbors 2 and The Nice Guys struggled to get their footing, according to comScore estimates on Sunday.Related: The Angry Birds Movie review – game spin-off that doesn't quite reach Lego Movie levels Continue reading...

Participants focus on ‘thinking nothing’ in public park in Seoul as retreat from stress and digital overloadDozens of people in one of the world’s most wired nations have taken part in South Korea’s “space out” competition aimed at promoting a life free from stress and information overload.About 60 contestants spent 90 minutes sitting in a public park in Seoul without talking, sleeping, eating or using any electronic devices during the event – under the slogan of Relax Your Brain. Continue reading...

Labels are facing off with Google’s video service over revenues and rights, yet it’s also their biggest partner for streaming musicYouTube and the music industry? It’s complicated. YouTube is the biggest music-streaming service in the world by some distance, but it’s also the biggest villain in the eyes of many within the music industry.This week, British industry body the BPI has attacked YouTube again over the “value gap” (sometimes “value grab” in the US) between the number of songs being streamed on its service, and the money that those streams are being generated for rightsholders and musicians. Continue reading...

GV, the investment arm of Google’s parent company, is revealed to have backed online lender which now falls under ‘dangerous products’ categoryJust days after Google proudly announced it had banned the morally dubious payday loan sector from its advertising platforms, its parent company has been revealed to be a repeat investor in a payday loan lender.GV, the venture-capital investment arm of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has backed online lender LendUp since before its launch in 2012 and has provided capital for every equity round LendUp has done since, the Wall Street Journal first reported. Continue reading...

The Iraqi government cuts off fixed-line and mobile broadband services to discourage children from smuggling mobile phones into state testsIraq has been turning off the internet across the country to stop children cheating in exams.

A startup founded by ex-Google, Tesla and Apple engineers believes self-driving truck are a good fit for the nation’s long, straight, lonely roadsEveryone in San Francisco these days wants to build a self-driving car.So in a company town that prides itself on going against the grain, this startup wants to build a self-driving truck. Continue reading...

US tech firm says Britain’s membership of the EU makes it ‘one of the most attractive places in Europe’ to make investmentsMicrosoft is the latest business to come out in support of the UK remaining in the EU, in a letter to more than 5,000 of its UK staff. The tech firm said Britain’s membership in the union made it one of “the most attractive places in Europe” to make investments.In a letter to employees on Tuesday, Microsoft’s chief executive in the UK, Michel Van der Bel, said: “We appreciate and respect that there are a range of reasons that motivate people on both sides of the debate, but as a business that is very committed to this country, our view is that the UK should remain in the EU. Continue reading...

Inspired by thousands of romantic novels, technique creates verse that rivals that of Douglas Adams’s VogonsAfter its attempts to digest romance novels, one of Google’s artificial intelligence projects is now accidentally writing poetry, some of which would make the fictional Vogons proud.

The former Uber driver says his support for the settlement in a landmark lawsuit seeking to reclassify drivers as employees was obtained ‘under false pretenses’The original plaintiff in the landmark class-action lawsuit seeking to reclassify Uber drivers as employees has spoken out against the settlement and accused the drivers’ attorney of obtaining his support for the agreement “under false pretenses, duress, and misinformation”.Douglas O’Connor, a former Uber driver, filed suit against the ride-hail company in August 2013, kicking off a three-year legal battle that resulted in a proposed settlement of $84m on 21 April. It allowed Uber to continue classifying drivers as independent contractors. Continue reading...

UK surveillance agency launches official account as part of attempt to improve its image after Edward Snowden revelationsSpooks at GCHQ have been snooping on our tweets for years, but now members of the public who use Twitter can see theirs following the launch of the surveillance agency’s first official account.More than 10 years after Twitter began, GCHQ dipped its public toe into the social networking water with the words “hello, world” just after 11am on Monday. Continue reading...

Jarett Kobek’s self-published diatribe against San Francisco startup culture has become a sensation, winning plaudits from the New York Times and Bret Easton EllisAmong the poetry racks on the second floor of San Francisco’s legendary City Lights bookstore, an audience member is confronting the author Jarett Kobek with a spirited defense of the revolutionary power of Twitter and Bernie Sanders. His harangue, delivered during a book reading in February, was in atavistic beatnik dialect. “I do Tweet about it, Jack!” he shouted, stirring an erstwhile polite audience to shout things like “Sit the fuck down!” and “Let him talk!”It’s hard to imagine a more appropriate reception for Kobek’s second novel, I Hate the Internet, a savage satire of internet culture set in 2013 San Francisco.. It centers on the fallout from a surreptitious recording posted to Youtube, its narrator describing real-world events of the city rendered in the hyperbolic language that has come to represent online interactions, and diverging into off-topic invective to expose its “ intolerable bullshit”. Continue reading...

Watch as a drone is taken down by Russian man with a spearWhat’s the greatest weakness of a drone? Partial marks if you said an eagle, a radio frequency jammer, or another drone.But no, the real answer is “Russian historical re-enactors armed with a spear”, as this video from Russia’s Rusborg gathering earlier this month reveals. Continue reading...

When Keith Stuart wrote of the emotional impact of finishing a great and involving game, our readers responded in kind

European Union believes Google has promoted its own shopping service at the expense of rivalsGoogle faces a record antitrust fine of about €3bn euros (£2.4bn) from the European commission in the coming weeks, the Sunday Telegraph has said.The European Union has accused Google of promoting its shopping service in internet searches at the expense of rival offerings in a case that has dragged on since late 2010. Continue reading...

German BfV intelligence agency alleges Russian hackers are behind attacks against Nato, a French TV channel and Ukraine’s power grid in recent yearsGermany’s domestic secret service has accused Russia of a series of international cyber-attacks aimed at spying and sabotage, in “hybrid warfare” that also targeted the German parliament last year.

Adult colouring book craze and 150th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland helped revival in traditional publishing last year

The online retailer has a ‘huge antitrust problem’, says the Republican, and accuses founder Jeff Bezos of using the Washington Post for political influenceDonald Trump has launched a frontal assault on Amazon.com, the world’s biggest online retailer, saying it has “a huge antitrust problem”.Related: Paul Ryan and Donald Trump might say they're unified. But there's a bloody civil war on | Richard Wolffe Continue reading...

World’s largest computer game publisher also hopes broadcasts on Twitch and Instagram will help take e-sports mainstream

We are comfortable with a cartoon portrayal of Allies versus Nazis. It’s not much worse to gamify the Great WarThe first world war may not be the most obvious time period in which to set a team-based first-person shooter with a heavy emphasis on vehicular combat.The pointless slaughter of trench warfare, with lines of enlisted men marching slowly towards machine guns that mowed them down by the thousands, all to gain or lose mere feet of frontline, isn’t exactly a “fun” scenario. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Thursday! Continue reading...

Bank’s payment system, expected to start in June, is a direct rival to Google’s Android Pay and arrives 12 months after Apple PayBarclays is launching the UK’s first Android contactless payment service, which will allow customers to use their smartphone to “wave and pay” in shops, restaurants and across the London transport network.Hot on the heels of Apple Pay, and offered as a direct rival to Google’s Android Pay which launches in the UK this year, Barclays’ Contactless Mobile will enable customers to pay with their Android handset in the same way as a contactless bank card. The service is expected go live in June. Continue reading...

Study finds use of computers by students in lectures and seminars has ‘substantial negative effect’ on performance

France is encouraging employees to disconnect from work at weekends but why is the narrative around our online lives so punitive? Being connected is our lifelineI left my house without my phone the other day and could not be bothered to go back to get it. “Sure, I can be totally disconnected for a day,” I thought to myself. “It will be good for me.”It’s a long time since I have been phoneless. It’s not as if I am a teenager who feels her phone to be a necessary limb, is it? It would surely mean that I would be truly in the moment; not distracted by social-media froth, not needing to know the news as it happens, unable to answer emails or text various offspring my various and inane instructions. Instead, I would be in the world, communicating deeply and authentically with it. Poor world. For I awaited this cliched epiphany of disconnection. I wanted to say that everything was more meaningful now that I was no longer “elsewhere” (ie online). I wanted to feel the moral superiority, or at least maturity, of those people who proudly announce they don’t do Facebook/Twitter/Instagram in the same way they once would have announced they didn’t watch TV. Continue reading...

Actor dressed as the foul-mouthed antihero cheerfully admits his movie stole its opening sequence from the web series, for which he’s ‘way too big of a deal’Superhero movie Deadpool took us to meta defcon one earlier in the year with its constant breaking of the fourth wall and self-reflexive badinage about the standard tropes of comic book movies. But it appears the world just found out there’s yet another level to be reached before brains everywhere explode at the sheer inter-cannibalisation of it all. Yes, star Ryan Reynolds has appeared in the Honest Trailers trailer for his own movie. As Deadpool. Continue reading...

Like baseball cards and Beanie Babies, old-school Apple products have become lucrative collectables that are selling online for thousands of dollarsIf you are one of those people who hoards old electronics, then you might be able to cash in those iPods from the early 2000s for a few hundred dollars – or even tens of thousands.Like baseball cards from the 60s, Star Wars figurines from the 80s, or Beanie Babies from the 90s, iPods from the early 2000s are becoming the latest collectible items to be trading at frankly ludicrous prices on auction sites like eBay – especially since Apple announced in September 2014 that it was discontinuing the iPod. Continue reading...

The trailer for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare title has been disliked more than a million times. What has happened to the world’s favourite shooter?They’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire in Earth’s outer orbit. Cities blasted to rubble by invading battle craft. And how have they reacted to these precious moments? By down-voting the absolute crap out of them on YouTube.Yes, this is the news that the trailer for the latest Call of Duty title – the modestly named Infinite Warfare – has received a record number of dislikes on the video-sharing platform. Right now the figure stands at 1,689,649, a hate benchmark that social scientists are calling “well into Justin Bieber territory”. Continue reading...

Filed patents show the British engineering firm may use solid-state batteries that could stretch electric car’s range to hundreds of miles and increase safetyDyson could become the next Tesla motors as it develops a new electric car, according to a leading industry expert. Filed patents show the Dyson vehicle may use solid-state batteries, which would see the car’s range stretch to hundreds of miles and also be safer than current batteries.In March, a government document revealed funding to help Dyson develop “a new battery electric vehicle”. The company declined to comment but in 2015 it said it planned to invest £1bn in battery technology and in October it bought solid-state battery company, Sakti3, for $90m, which founder Sir James Dyson said had “developed a breakthrough in battery technology”. Continue reading...

The 13 new representations presented at the Unicode consortium include cartoon female engineers, chemists, plumbers and farmersGoogle employees have proposed a new set of emojis aimed at promoting gender equality in the workplace, including cartoon female engineers, chemists, plumbers and farmers.The Google team presented the designs of 13 new emojis on Tuesday at the Unicode Consortium, a Silicon Valley not-for-profit group that runs an “emoji subcommittee” overseeing the creation of new emojis. Continue reading...

Company axes ‘toys-to-life’ games and shutters Avalanche Software in move that marks withdrawal from console gaming sectorDisney is axing its Disney Infinity series of video games, the company has announced.The decision, which has resulted in a $147m write-off, will involve the closure of Disney’s in-house studio, Avalanche Software, and in effect marks the entertainment giant’s withdrawal from the console gaming sector. Continue reading...

The 2010 Alice in Wonderland movie boasted some gothic magic courtesy of Tim Burton. The James Bobin-directed sequel is uninspired in comparisonWhen Alice in Wonderland, Tim Burton’s live-action take on Lewis Carroll’s children’s classic, opened in the spring of 2010, cutting-edge 3D was a relatively new phenomenon. Avatar had broken records that winter, setting the bar for the blockbusters that would follow. Audiences craving an experience similar to James Cameron’s space jam flocked to Burton’s film, which also promised viewers an immersive journey to a magical world. The fact that the picture was mauled by critics didn’t seem to deter audiences.After it grossed $1bn worldwide, a sequel was all but inevitable. What’s surprising is how long it’s taken. On the evidence of Alice Through the Looking Glass, Disney didn’t use the time to iron out the kinks that made the first instalment so lacklustre. Instead, the studio has managed to deliver a follow-up that’s even weaker than its predecessor. In crude terms: Alice’s second trip to Underland wasn’t worth the wait. Continue reading...

The guild will not have a contract, will not negotiate fares, and will have no say in the benefits offered to Uber drivers but will be able to appeal against dismissalsUber has agreed to create an organization called the Drivers’ Guild that will hold monthly meetings with Uber executives, heading off a call for more formal unionization.Related: Uber trials penalty fees for late passengers Continue reading...

Following report alleging Facebook suppresses conservative views in ‘trending topics’, top Republican senator John Thune sent a terse letter to Mark ZuckerbergA top US Senate Republican demanded on Tuesday that Facebook explain allegations that it suppressed conservative articles on users’ homepages as part of a political agenda.Related: Facebook denies censoring conservative stories from trending topics Continue reading...

The Facebook chief has written that life as a single parent is far harder than she realised when she wrote her bestseller Lean In – and has vowed to support working mothersName: Sheryl SandbergAge: 46 Continue reading...

Landmark ruling denies National Crime Agency access to computers used by Lauri Love, who is accused of hacking NasaAn alleged hacker fighting extradition to the US will not have to give the passwords for his encrypted computers to British law enforcement officers, following a landmark legal ruling.Related: British student fights extradition to US for allegedly hacking the FBI and Nasa Continue reading...

Web users with Amazon account can now upload their own videos to the Video Direct platformAmazon is launching a YouTube-style video service allowing its customers to post clips, widening its growing competition with Google across online video.From Tuesday anyone with an Amazon account can upload videos they have made or own the rights to on to the company’s Video Direct service.

Disability group welcomes launch in London of UberWAV, which will charge same as Uber – but with a longer wait timeFor the first time, Uber users in London can book wheelchair-accessible vehicles through the company’s minicab app.UberWAV is offering specially-outfitted cars to wheelchair users in the capital for the same price as a normal UberX ride. But users will have to wait considerably longer than most: the company says that in the first few weeks “we expect average wait times of around 25 mins in zones 1–2 and 40 mins in zones 3–4”. Continue reading...

A sense of loss often follows our reaching the end of a gripping novel or TV series, but in games our interaction with the characters can make the feeling deeperWhen my son was coming to the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, having avidly consumed the previous six books in the series, his progress noticeably slowed. He’d go days, weeks even, before finishing a chapter – so much so that we thought that he was going off the story altogether. But he wasn’t. He was drawing it out. Like millions of other fans, he simply could not face leaving Hogwarts. Harry, Ron and Hermione had become more than characters: they were friends. He cried when he read the epilogue, “19 years later”.This is a common phenomenon with very good books, and with television series too: the characters become so habitual and beloved over time that we form relationships with them, often augmented by the way we avidly discuss each instalment with friends and in online forums. In 2014, Cristel Russell, an associate professor at the American University’s Kogod School of Business, completed a study entitled When Narrative Brands End: The Impact of Narrative Closure and Consumption Sociality on Loss Accommodation, which argued that fans effectively go through a mourning process when a good show or book series comes to a close. We have to learn to let go. Continue reading...

Social network has found no evidence that allegations it ignores news from right-wing sites are true, says head of searchFacebook has denied reports that it censors conservative publications from its “trending topics”.A report by Gizmodo said staff who aggregated content for Facebook were encouraged to ignore news from fringe conservative sites such as Breitbart until it appeared on more mainstream sites such as CNN. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt is Tuesday. Continue reading...

Billionaire and longtime Republican donor is on ballot list in California to elect the party’s nominee for presidentA Silicon Valley billionaire who is one of the top libertarian mega-donors in Republican politics will be a delegate for Donald Trump.Peter Thiel, who was a cofounder of PayPal and owns a substantial stake in Facebook, is on the ballot in California as a Republican delegate for Trump in the San Francisco-based 12th congressional district. Thiel’s name was on a list submitted to the California secretary of state’s office by the Trump campaign as an approved candidate. Continue reading...

Some Uber drivers in Massachusetts and California are feeling short-changed by a settlement they say falls short of what they are owed by by the companyUber could have been forced to pay $852m in damages to California and Massachusetts drivers if it had lost the landmark class-action lawsuit over employment classification that the company settled in April for up to $100m, according to new court documents.The disclosure of the potential value of the lawsuit will likely reignite anger among some Uber drivers who have expressed suspicion that the settlement falls short of what they are owed by the $62.5bn company. Continue reading...

Social network says it has ‘never authorized’ Dataminr to sell information to US intelligence agencies, but officials say tools have been used previouslyTwitter has blocked US spies from buying bulk data on its users from a data analytics company.Until now, US national security agencies, including the FBI and CIA, had been able to query treasure troves of Twitter data through software from Dataminr, the New York-based analytics company in which Twitter owns a 5% stake. Agents could enter search terms such as “Isis” or “jihad” and view more tweets, over a longer period, than what a standard Twitter search would offer, people familiar with the process said. Continue reading...

The addictive smartphone game has been shoehorned into an amusing animation narrative whose ridiculousness is part of its appealThat’s right: a film has been made out of the addictive smartphone/tablet game Angry Birds, where catapults ping flightless birds at the little pink piggies who have stolen their eggs. This movie is driven by a naked commercial imperative – though perhaps no more than any other film – and it doesn’t match up to the hyperactive, clever surreality of the Lego Movie. Yet there is a kind of pleasure and fascination, mixed with exasperation, in seeing how the game has been mangled and bent into the shape of the conventional animation narrative, with zappy little dialogue moments, funny characters and some sophisticated touches for the grownups (including a nod to The Shining, of all things). Continue reading...

Curators of the social media company’s ‘trending news’ sidebar purposely leave out stories from rightwing sites, a former employee has allegedFacebook’s trending bar deliberately suppresses conservative news, according to a new report.Facebook, now arguably the most important distributor of news online, has cultivated the idea that its bar is an impartial algorithm that responds to “likes” and gives users only what they’ve indicated they want. Continue reading...

US delivery company UPS are backing drone start-up that delivers medical supplies across Rwanda. It will provide $800,000 (£55,5376) to the company Zipline and allow for critical blood transfusion deliveries to be made 20 time faster than motorcycle. In addition to the humanitarian work, UPS are using the trials to test how unseful the drone system could be in its commercial sector Continue reading...

Kevin Feige says Scarlett Johansson’s character is favoured for a standalone film in the Marvel cinematic universeMarvel Studios hope to confirm a Black Widow movie starring Scarlett Johansson as the hard-kicking superhero, according to a new interview with its president, Kevin Feige.Speaking to Deadline, Feige said the Disney-owned studio saw the former Shield agent as a key candidate for a forthcoming solo outing, ahead of fellow Avengers Falcon, War Machine and Hawkeye. Continue reading...