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Volvo’s flagship SUV is already the safest on the planet. Now, with the T8 hybrid, it wants to be the greenest, too£55,455

A helpful note to the men of the tech capital: I don’t consider being female my primary identifier or interest. Let’s talk about something elseThe Silicon Valley season premiere panel was eight men and one woman, and anyone could predict what would happen.The interviewer onstage asked each man questions about the popular HBO show satirizing Silicon Valley’s tech boom. He asked the creator, Mike Judge, what inspired the show; asked a main character whether he knew it would be such a hit; asked an actor how much his comedic riffs got into the final cut. And then he turned to the one woman on stage, Amanda Crew: Continue reading...

iPad and iPhone users warned not to fall for fake emails and texts aimed at tricking them into handing over their login detailsApple iPhone and iPad users have been warned not to fall for fake emails and texts that aim to trick them into handing over their iCloud login so scammers can access all their personal information stored in the cloud.The messages claim to be from Apple and typically warn the user that their account has been “restricted in order to safeguard your information” and urge the recipient to “verify and update your account” using the link provided. Continue reading...

‘When I eventually plucked up the courage to take it out, one mate asked if I was offering a mobile dominatrix service’When the designers at Electra dreamed up the Glam Punk 3i in their sun-strewn Californian studio, they probably didn’t imagine it dodging glass on a bike lane in Moss Side in the rain. It languished in the office for ages while I agonised over what to wear astride such a ludicrous machine. You can’t rock a high-vis cagoule on a gold-and-black cruiser with leather handlebar streamers and a saddle studded like a camp Christingle orange. Electra’s website suggested I accessorise my ride with a mint-green beanie and cap-sleeved black T-shirt but it was 5C and chucking it down and I wanted to wear my helmet. “Turn sidewalks into runways,” they said, but Greater Manchester police had declared war on pavement cyclists the previous week and I didn’t fancy a fixed-penalty fine.When I eventually plucked up the courage to take it out, one mate asked if I was offering a mobile dominatrix service. Snoop Dogg slopes around Compton on a cruiser in his Gin and Juice video; I took mine for a drink in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. My friend Steve fell about laughing. “It’s so butch,” he said, “and yet it’s got a kickstand and a bell.” Continue reading...

Porsche, Volkswagen, Audi, Opel and Mercedes diesel cars will be recalled as part of a clampdown on nitrogen oxide emissionsGermany’s top carmakers will recall 630,000 vehicles to fix diesel engine software technology that has been blamed for causing high pollution, while the emissions scandal engulfing Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors deepened.Porsche, Volkswagen, Audi, Opel and Mercedes diesel cars will be recalled as part of a clampdown on nitrogen oxide emissions, according to a German government official. BMW, which invested in fuel-saving technologies earlier than most rivals, is not part of the recall, the official said. Continue reading...

Being a conservative within liberal tech culture isn’t easy, but a surprising number of group’s members are betting on the outsider who means businessThere are more timely polls of California’s Republican presidential primary, and certainly surveys that are more statistically representative. But the informal straw poll of the Silicon Valley Association of Republican Women earlier this year is one of the more intriguing.Related: Secretive group of Hollywood conservatives suddenly dissolves Continue reading...

Online abuse pollutes the water in which we all swim. As the Guardian’s first female editor, it is important to me that we tackle itLast year, a few weeks before I started as the new editor-in-chief of the Guardian, I read a review in the New York Times of Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. The book looks at the emergence of public humiliations on social media, and the review ended by saying that “the actual problem is that none of the men running those bazillion-dollar internet companies can think of one single thing to do about all the men who send women death threats”. Since I was about to become the first woman to run the Guardian (not, sad to say, a bazillion-dollar internet company), I decided that I had a responsibility to try to do something about it.That’s why, over the past two weeks, the Guardian has published a series of articles looking at online abuse, with more to follow in the coming months. You might have read our interview with Monica Lewinsky in which she described the trauma of being subjected to what could be called the first great internet shaming, and how she still has to think of the consequences of talking about her past – whether by misspeaking, she could trigger a whole new round of abuse. Continue reading...

Forecasts show that Silicon Valley is at risk even under optimistic scenarios where rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions avoid the most severe increasesTechnology giants including Facebook and Google face the prospect of their prestigious Silicon Valley headquarters becoming swamped by water as rising sea levels threaten to submerge much of the property development boom gripping San Francisco and the Bay Area.Sea level forecasts by a coalition of scientists show that the Silicon Valley bases for Facebook, Google and Cisco are at risk of being cut off or even flooded, even under optimistic scenarios where rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions avoid the most severe sea level increases. Continue reading...

During an interview with Financial Times companies editor Brooke Masters on Thursday, FBI director James Comey says his investigators paid more than what he will earn in the next seven years to buy the software that hacked the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone. The director’s salary is $180,000 per year, so the total is at least $1.26m Continue reading...

Alphabet’s expansion plans don’t come cheap, with its empire set to include original YouTube series alongside Google, self-driving cars and virtual realityGoogle’s parent company Alphabet saw its revenue grow 17% during the first three months of this year, the company said on Thursday, but spent more money on its experimental moonshot projects, engineers, data centers and YouTube shows, causing it to miss investors’ profit expectations.Alphabet shares dropped more than 4% in the US during after-hours trading to about $724 a share. Continue reading...

The hefty price paid for the software that hacked Syed Farook’s iPhone, which Apple refused to help the FBI break into, signals a growing ‘exploit market’The FBI paid about $1.3m for software to hack into the iPhone of San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook, director James Comey told a London audience on Thursday.The staggering price illustrates the growth of the so-called “exploit market” for digital spy tools and cyber weapons as governments increasingly use hacker tricks for law enforcement and war. Prices for such software are rarely disclosed, although anything in the seven-figure range is extremely expensive. Continue reading...

HBO’s cult television series ‘Game of Thrones’ premieres its sixth season on Sunday, and now there’s a new tool for eager fans to keep up with the action: a computer program that predicts which characters are most likely to die. It’s a project called “A Song of Ice and Data” (a play on the name of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy book series, on which HBO’s show is based) created by a computer science class at the Technical University of Munich

Microsoft has stopped making its hugely successful console. Here are our favourite moments from its 10-year historyThe life of a games console is brutish and short, but some live longer and brighter than others.Launched in 2005, the Xbox 360, which has recently been discontinued by Microsoft, will be remembered as a classic games machine. Powerful and well-supported by publishers, the console was also perfectly set up for the coming era of online multiplayer gaming – via the robust XBox Live infrastructure. Continue reading...

What about all the information not available on Google? Lynch’s survey of reference books covers much ground and makes the case that for distillation of knowledge and serendipity of browsing, printed texts are easily bestFor some years now, the most satisfyingly passive-aggressive way of responding to a factual query on social media has been to reply with a link from the website “Let Me Google That For You”. On opening the link, your pesterer sees an animation of their exact query being typed into the Google search field, the “I’m feeling lucky” box being clicked and a page showing what is almost certainly the answer to their question. It is a sadistically elaborate vehicle for a simple message: you are wasting both our time by asking a person something, when you could ask a search engine.But the search engine is hardly infallible. It is commonly assumed these days that all useful information is on the internet, but it isn’t. Most academic research is held in databases that are prohibitively expensive for those without university affiliation or access to a good library. And there is an awful lot of stuff locked away in books that haven’t yet been digitised. The easy accessibility of what we can see tends to obscure the fact that so much is in shadow or missing altogether. We take the tip of the iceberg for the whole. If “knowledge” is now largely synonymous with “what you can find on Google”, its meaning has become dangerously shrivelled. Continue reading...

Apple has hired ex-Tesla engineer and opened R&D base in Germany, but reports suggest first versions of long-rumoured vehicle won’t be self-drivingApple’s not-so-secret project to build an electric car is heating up, according to media reports, with the company poaching an expert from rivals Tesla. It has also opened an R&D office in Germany, home to some of the world’s most important luxury car manufacturers.Industry site Electrek reports that Chris Porritt, a British car designer who worked at Aston Martin until he left in 2013 to become the vice-president of vehicle engineering at Tesla Motors, has been hired by Apple to work on the company’s Project Titan – just a few months after the executive believed to have been running the project, Steve Zadesky, left the company. Continue reading...

Sean’s wife spends up to eight hours a day typing reports and he wonders which software works best. But speech recognition is already built into WindowsMy wife can spend up to eight hours a day typing reports in Microsoft Word 2010 and due to RSI issues, is thinking about investing in some speech recognition software. There seems to be a huge diversity in the price of these, and we need to know how much we should spend and how reliable they are. She would also be interested in a portable version, which she could use on the go.I’ve been on a few websites and I’ve identified the Dragon Naturally Speaking 13 Premium Wireless as a possible solution. We’re running Windows 7 with the option to upgrade to Windows 10. Sean Continue reading...

PM says Australia has ‘offensive’ capabilities after attacks on Bureau of Meteorology and Department of Parliamentary ServicesAustralia has “significant” offensive cyber-attack capabilities and government agencies have been breached in malicious cyber activity, according to the prime minister.Malcolm Turnbull made the comments on Thursday at the launch of the government’s $230m cybersecurity strategy, which includes cash for more specialist cybercrime officers in the Australian Crime Commission and the Australian federal police. Continue reading...

Boss reveals the app trials functions such as the ‘super-like’ in the country because users there don’t ‘cross-pollinate’ with the rest of the world

New Bob Marley filter on Snapchat has been criticised for being the digital equivalent of blackfaceSnapchat is facing criticism for introducing a Bob Marley filter to its app which pastes the late singer’s face over the user’s, adding cartoon dreadlocks and a cap.The social media company is being accused not only of introducing the digital equivalent of blackface, but also for the timing of the filter: it appears to have been introduced to mark 20 April (or 4/20), an important day in weed culture – but nothing to do with Bob Marley himself, outside of the musician’s own involvement with marijuana. Continue reading...

Sources fear that mysterious Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting, who has a stake in both promising startups, is exerting increasing influence over the rival companiesThe glossy video on the website of Atieva, a promising Silicon Valley startup developing a self-driving electric vehicle, is a hard sell for the California dream. “To reimagine the future, we’re rewriting the rules. Applying the California state of mind to shape a new vision of what a car can be.”Related: Inside Faraday Future: is it really a big player in the future of electric cars? Continue reading...

European commission takes preliminary view that Google abused its mobile operating system’s dominant positionThe EU has accused Google of skewing the market against competitors with its Android mobile operating system.Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition chief, said the European commission had taken the preliminary view that Google had abused its dominant position, following an initial one-year investigation.

Tick off your tasks and get more organised using this selection of apps, from Wunderlist and Google Keep to Any.do and HabiticaJuggling tasks is an important skill in the modern world. From that presentation you promised to send your boss by today to picking up some ingredients for dinner, from holiday planning to present-buying, remembering everything can sometimes be overwhelming.Fear not – your smartphone can help you avoid drowning in a sea of tasks. There are a range of apps aiming to help you get on top of your to-do lists, many that synchronise with partner apps on your computer, tablet or even your smartwatch. Continue reading...

Online collection of women’s stories has already launched in the US, Canada and China with content from Hillary Clinton and Oprah WinfreyAOL is to launch its online women’s platform, Makers, in the UK with high-profile names including singer Annie Lennox, Everyday Sexism Project founder Laura Bates and broadcaster Sandi Toksvig.Makers, an online collection of women’s stories which has content from Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and Girls writer and star, Lena Dunham, has already launched in the US, Canada and China. Continue reading...

Kathy Chen criticised by pro-democracy activists for her government and military background as she joins social media site still blocked by BeijingChina’s Communist party-controlled media has criticised “narrow-minded” and “prejudiced” online activists who are questioning Twitter’s decision to appoint as its first regional chief a former member of the People’s Liberation Army who once had ties to the country’s security services.Kathy Chen – a former Microsoft manager whose Twitter handle describes her as a “curious explorer” – was named as the social network’s managing director for mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan last week. Continue reading...

Students in Munich have crunched data on every Game of Thrones character to predict their likelihood of death – turns out Jon Snow’s was a statistical shocker

Date set for WWDC, latest developer event, as tech giant announces updates to MacBook rangeMark 13 June in your calendars. That’s the first day of Apple’s 2016 Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, when the company is expected to reveal the latest version of iOS, a bump to the Apple TV, and maybe even a renamed release of OS X – or “MacOS”, as it hinted at last week.The event was announced, bizarrely, through Siri, which started giving out a more precise answer to the question “when is WWDC?” than previously. Until Monday evening, the digital assistant had answered with “WWDC is not yet announced”, but now it correctly says that “the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will be held June 13 through June 17 in San Francisco. I can’t wait!” Continue reading...

Good sound, nice design, Bluetooth freedom with a 12-hour battery life without breaking the bank. If only they don’t pinch your earsSkullcandy has made a habit out of producing pretty good sounding and attractive headphones that don’t cost the earth. The new Grind wireless headphones continue that trend but are ruined by one ear-crushing flaw.

The Dutch parliament will strive towards all-electric sales by midway through the next decade if senate passes motion into lawDutch politicians have voted through a motion calling on the country to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars starting in 2025.The motion has only passed through the lower house of the Netherlands’ parliament, and would need to pass through the Dutch senate to become legally binding. But its success in a majority vote puts the earliest date yet on just when a major country might begin phasing out polluting transportation. Continue reading...

Sainsbury’s has doubled its digital and technology staff in the past year as competition from online retailers mountsSainsbury’s is hiring 150 digital and technology experts to help improve its online store as it finalises the buyout of Argos.The team, who will work out of an existing Sainsbury’s office in Manchester’s Arndale centre, will include software developers and engineers and will work in partnership with 900 other digital and technology experts based in London and Coventry. Continue reading...

Newspapers have been battered by the internet. But the industry could be about to fight back – with help from websites that aim to be the iTunes of journalismLast week a group of 17 American news organisations, including the New York Times and Washington Post, served a cease-and-desist legal order against a start-up news platform. The platform, called Brave, was launched in January by the creator of JavaScript, Brendan Eich. The Brave browser had been created in part in response to two recent trends in news delivery: the emergence of mobile platforms such as Apple News and Facebook’s Instant Articles, and the growing use of software that allows readers to block advertisements from news content.Eich’s model had ad-blocking software built in – but its new trick was to strip out ads sold with news content and replace them with ads of its own. This practice served, Eich argued, to enable quicker loading of news pages, and to “protect the data sovereignty and anonymity” of users. Unlike on Facebook, say, no data trail would be left by those who clicked on the items. Moreover, Brave would offer 55-70% of ad revenue directly back to the original publisher. Continue reading...

The Facebook boss cannot rule for ever, no matter how many ‘new’ services his website providesPower and money are the two great aphrodisiacs, and few people or institutions are immune to their attractions. Not even the Economist, a posh magazine which resolutely sees itself as floating above the vulgar ruckus of journalistic hackery. Last week, like an elderly dowager seduced by Justin Bieber, the venerable publication checked its collective brains at the door and swooned over Mark Zuckerberg, the infant prodigy who now presides over Facebook, and so possesses both power and money.For the cover illustration, the magazine photoshopped a picture of a celebrated statue of Emperor Constantine the Great (272-337). Young Zuckerberg’s head, adorned with a wreath of gold laurel leaves, replaced Constantine’s. The sword in his left hand was replaced by a Facebook logo, and the emperor’s languidly drooping right hand was rotated 180 degrees so that it now gave the thumbs-up that is Facebook’s “like” symbol. (The gesture had a rather different interpretation in Roman times.) On the plinth of the statue were the words: “MARCVS ZVCKERBERGVS” and CONIVNGE ET IMPERA”, which is the nearest the photoshopper could get to “connect and rule”. Continue reading...

The 308 started life as a rather nice family hatch, but then the speed freaks at Peugeot Sport turned up the dialsPrice: £26,555

Customers should be able to leave contracts and get compensation if they have been misled by service providers, parliamentarians sayThe way broadband speed is advertised is misleading and must be reformed, a cross-party group of MPs has said.Customers should be able to leave contracts and be given compensation if they have been misled by service providers, according to the British Infrastructure Group. It also criticised the fact that only one in 10 broadband users need to be able to obtain the fastest advertised speed, under Advertising Standards Authority guidelines. Continue reading...

It’s unlikely you’ll feel moved to race anyone at the lightsBeware the car that companies buy you because they feel as though they have to; it will come with stupid conditions to make sure you don’t enjoy yourself. That is a generalised view, with no particular relevance to the Mazda 3 1.5D, except that it was devised to look as though it belonged to a mid-range marketing executive and to fit into a low carbon bracket at the same time, which is like wanting a handbag that is chic but will fit your wellies.Now, that is unfair: this looks a lot like the rest in the range, which is to say, slightly sharkish in the exterior styling, but with narrow, elegant features and an air of reliability – a bit like a slim, reasonable shark. It’s hard to imagine, but you’ll know it when you see it. Continue reading...

The European Union’s digital chief says he is worried about how clear some search engines are when displaying advertisements in search resultsThe European Union’s digital chief wants search engines such as Alphabet Inc’s Google and Microsoft’s Bing to be more transparent about advertising in web search results but ruled out a separate law for web platforms.European Commission vice-president Andrus Ansip, who is overseeing a wide-ranging inquiry into how web platforms conduct their business, said on Friday the EU executive would not take a horizontal approach to regulating online services. Continue reading...

Two days after head of AMC Theatres mulled openly about allowing texting in movie theaters, he says he’s heard audience opinion ‘loud and clear’Oops. The idea lasted about as long as a Snapchat text: the head of AMC Theatres mulled openly about creating texting-friendly movie theaters to appeal to smartphone-addicted youngsters. Two days later, after a backlash on social media, the company says it’s leaving the idea on “the cutting room floor”.

There is no magic bullet against cyberbullying and revenge porn, but education in school and clear company policies will bolster the laws we now haveAttitudes towards online abuse have undergone a sea change over the last decade. In the past, cyber-harassment – often a perfect storm of threats, impersonations, defamation, and privacy invasions directed at an individual – was routinely dismissed as “no big deal”.So it was for one Yale law student. Starting in 2007, on an online discussion board, a cyber-mob falsely accused her of having herpes and sleeping with her dean. Anonymous posters described how they would rape her; they chronicled her daily whereabouts and prior jobs. Yet law enforcement told the student to ignore the attacks because “boys will be boys”. Officers advised her to “clean up” her cyber-reputation, as if she could control what appeared about her. Trivialising online abuse and blaming victims was the norm. Continue reading...

Labour MP, who was a target of online abuse, says authorities and web companies need to use their resources to tackle issueTrolling is still not being taken seriously enough by police and technology companies who already have the tools to take action against internet abusers, the Labour MP Stella Creasy has said.Creasy, who was targeted three years ago by one of the most high-profile Twitter trolls to be jailed, said the key to dealing with online abuse was challenging the underlying inequality, misogyny and prejudice that fuels the problem. Continue reading...

Video-on-demand apps competing with Sky Kids, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, DisneyLife, Hopster and PlayKids: how do they compare?Children in 2016 understand that they can watch TV shows “on demand” on a range of devices, from the family tablet to a parent’s smartphone.There is now a growing collection of apps serving these habits, from established broadcasters to internet companies and inventive startups. Some are free, while others charge a monthly subscription.

In the wake of Apple’s encryption battle with the FBI, the latest version of Facebook’s popular messenger tool will add strong encryption to texts and callsWhatsApp is updating its messenger app so that every text and voice call on one of the world’s most popular apps will be protected with strong encryption – potentially putting millions more conversations outside the purview of authorities.The development at the messenger company, which is owned by Facebook, is striking given Silicon Valley’s recent staredown with authorities over user data privacy. Continue reading...

Developer says Swipebuster is making a comment about privacy, but users of dating app are worriedTinder isn’t as private as many of its users think, and a new website which aims to exploit that is causing concern among users of the dating app.Swipebuster promises to let Tinder users find out whether people they know have an account on the dating app, and even stalk them down to their last known location. Continue reading...

When Alex Nawabi adapted a controller for someone with cerebral palsy, he reopened a whole avenue of experienceAt the beginning of March, 21-year-old PlayStation owner Peter Byrne sent an email to Sony. Byrne has cerebral palsy and he found that his left hand was hitting the large touchpad in the centre of the PlayStation 4 control pad, constantly pausing his game. He wanted to know if there was anything the console manufacturer could do. He did not expect what happened next.Alex Nawabi, a retail marketer at the company, got in touch. He told Byrne that he’d taken on the problem as a personal project. After 10 hours of work he’d managed to reverse engineer a PS4 controller, unwire the touchpad and rewire the button to the back of the controller. “Let me know if the button placement is uncomfortable,” he wrote. “If there are any changes you’d like made, please email me.” Continue reading...

Tech company beats rivals including Amazon and Facebook to broadcast 10 whole games worldwide

New automatic alternative text feature uses machine learning technology to identify objects in imagesFacebook is using an artificial intelligence system to automatically caption photos in an effort to increase the accessibility of its website and apps.The feature, called “automatic alternative text”, uses image recognition technology developed through machine-learning to identify the objects pictured. Continue reading...

Codemasters has been making rally games since the original PlayStation era, but it is now closer than ever to perfecting its craftThere have always been racing games that sell themselves on numbers. The dozens of circuits, the vast atlases of exotic locations, the garages crammed with authentically detailed vehicles. Other titles, meanwhile, push their glitzier production values; the lush menu systems, the licensed soundtracks, the trackside pizazz.The excellence of Dirt Rally, though, lies not in breadth, but in depth. Continue reading...

Lockscreen flaw allows attackers to quickly access personal information on a locked iPhone 6S or 6S Plus using Siri, Twitter and 3D TouchA security flaw with the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus will let anyone bypass the phone lock and access personal information without having to know the passcode.

The Beggars Group imprint, which released Thom Yorke’s solo albums, has made ‘first step’ in ownership move, raising speculation about the band’s next albumXL recordings has taken the first step in the transfer of Radiohead’s catalogue from Parlophone to the Beggars imprint, a spokesperson for the label has confirmed.Speculation surrounding the group’s catalogue activity started on Monday, when fans noticed that a number of Radiohead B-sides and rarities had disappeared from streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music. In addition, all albums up to and including Hail to the Thief listed on streaming sites are attributed to XL Recordings. According to XL, the “main albums” are being made available in their original form to begin with, “before non-LP material is reconfigured.”

Portrait is not a lost work by Dutch master but a 3D printed painting made by software that distilled the features of a RembrandtIf people think the portrait of a 17th-century thirtysomething man in black hat and white collar looks unmistakably like a Rembrandt, then Bas Korsten will be a happy man. The painting’s true creators are, however, data analysts and computers.On Tuesday in Amsterdam, an artwork called “the Next Rembrandt” will be unveiled for the first time. Continue reading...

Half the population of Turkey potentially opened up to identity theft and privacy violations after information posted to server hosted in RomaniaA database posted online allegedly contains the personal information of 49 million people on the Turkish citizenship database, potentially making more than half of the population of the country vulnerable to identity theft and massive privacy violations.The database, which has not been verified as authentic, was posted to a server apparently hosted in Romania on Monday with an introduction reading “Who would have imagined that backwards ideologies, cronyism and rising religious extremism in Turkey would lead to a crumbling and vulnerable technical infrastructure?” Continue reading...