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Forgotten 300 was taken down in mid-March after NSW Police complaints that some of its content constituted bullyingNSW Police is being urged to withdraw its complaint against a Facebook page set up to support past and present officers struggling with mental illness.Related: 'I'd just burst into tears': the emergency workers dealing with PTSD Continue reading...

The cost of a one-minute phone call from a BT landline will be a minimum of 30p, while broadband customers will pay at least £2 a month moreMillions of households with BT landline and broadband services will see their prices rise in the summer.

The e-commerce giant saw a 28% rise in sales on same point last year, and 64% sales boost for Amazon Web Services, but costs remain a key factor for its futureAmazon.com traditionally has only faced one obstacle in its quest to infiltrate every aspect of consumers’ lives: it often lost money.For a straight year now, that’s no longer the case. Continue reading...

Industry giants’ call for biofuels over electric and fuel-efficient cars puts Europe’s carbon emissions targets at risk, say expertsVW and Shell have united to try to block Europe’s push for electric cars and more efficient cars, saying biofuels should be at heart of efforts to green the industry instead.The EU is planning two new fuel efficiency targets for 2025 and 2030 to help meet promises made at the Paris climate summit last December. Continue reading...

Could this be the most chaotic, disruptive and confusing era in games industry history?The history of the games industry has always been characterised by waves of panic and destruction. From the great crash of 1983, through to the rise of the smartphone, there have always been pundits on hand to tell us the end is nigh for consoles, PCs and for gaming itself.In this edition we look the collapse of big studios, the shortening of console lifecycles, and the dawn of strange new ideas like virtual reality and punk rock game design.

Wentworth and Karen Maynard file lawsuit against the company and the 18-year-old driver who was trying to get Snapchat filter to read 100 miles per hourA couple is suing Snapchat, claiming that the social media app’s “speed filter” tempted a woman to drive too fast, causing a crash.Media outlets report Wentworth and Karen Maynard filed a lawsuit in Spalding County state court against Snapchat and 18-year-old driver Christal McGee. Continue reading...

Bureau will not tell Apple about the security flaw it exploited to break into the iPhone 5C, in part because it didn’t buy the rights to the technical detailsWhen the FBI bought a hacking tool to break into an iPhone, it wasn’t sure what exactly it got for its $1.3m.On Wednesday, the FBI confirmed it wouldn’t tell Apple about the security flaw it exploited to break inside the iPhone 5C of San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook in part, because the bureau says it didn’t buy the rights to the technical details of the hacking tool. Continue reading...

Transport secretary tells MPs that incident reported by BA pilot on 17 April is now not thought to have involved droneA passenger plane believed to have been struck by an unknown object as it approached Heathrow is now not thought to have been hit by a drone, the government has said.The pilot of a British Airways flight from Geneva reported a suspected collision with a drone on 17 Aprilbut the transport secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, told MPs on Thursday that experts believed this was not “a drone incident”. Continue reading...

Since the early 1990s, John has stored all his records using the Superbase database, but he reckons it won’t run in Windows 10. Are there still ways to run 16-bit software or is it time to move on?All my personal records since the very early 1990s, my record catalogue, and my family research – which has been deposited as data DVDs in County Records in England and State Records in Australia – are based on 16-bit programming in Superbase.I’ve alerted the various organisations that my data DVDs will not install in Microsoft Windows 10. At this stage, they will have to keep PCs running earlier editions of Windows, but this is not a satisfactory long-term bet for them or me.Microsoft and the Superbase programmers have done well if a personal computer program has worked for more than 35 years, but you really should have moved on before now. Schofield’s First Law of Computing says that you should never put data into a program unless you know exactly how to get it out. Perhaps I should also have specified “when”. Continue reading...

Deal worth $83m to put GPS satellite into orbit on a Falcon 9 rocket ends Lockheed Martin and Boeing’s monopoly on military launchesThe US air force has awarded Elon Musk’s SpaceX an $83m contract to launch a GPS satellite, ending the monopoly that Lockheed Martin and Boeing have held on military space launches for more than a decade.

Stocks soar in after-hours trading on news that net income was $1.51bn for the first three months of the year, up from $512m in first quarter of 2015Facebook took the occasion of positive first quarter results to announce a plan to consolidate power within the company with CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg.Facebook’s net income nearly tripled year-over-year, according to first-quarter results filed on Wednesday, sending the company’s stock soaring more than 8% in after-hours trading, and bucking the trend of disappointing results in the tech sector. Continue reading...

Federal Trade Commission had reached settlement agreement with Apple and Google in 2014 on issue of parental consent and passwords for in-app purchasesA federal judge has ruled that Amazon is liable for in-app purchases made by children, the latest development in a suit filed by the Federal Trade Commission in 2014.The FTC reached a settlement agreement with Apple and Google in 2014 about in-app purchases made by children without parental consent but sued Amazon when the Seattle company did not agree to settle. All three companies now require a password for in-app purchases or an opt-in to enable purchases without a password. Continue reading...

New console, which remains a mystery, is thought to be a follow-up of the Wii U and could be a hybrid games and home entertainment systemNintendo has confirmed that its next gaming platform, the NX, will be released globally in March 2017.Unusually, the company made the announcement in its quarterly financial statement, telling shareholders: “For our dedicated video game platform business, Nintendo is currently developing a gaming platform codenamed ‘NX’ with a brand-new concept. NX will be launched in March 2017 globally.” Continue reading...

Flagship smartphone finally cuts it at the top end with great camera, good screen, 1.5-day battery life and snappy performanceHTC, once a smartphone champion, has been struggling in recent years at the top end with handsets that have just missed the mark. But celebrating its 10 anniversary of smartphones manufacturing, has Taiwanese company finally cracked it with the HTC 10?

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

Much of the falloff is attributable to the stuggling Chinese economy, still the second-largest market in the world for Apple products behind the USApple shares dropped on Tuesday afternoon after the company reported a nearly 13% fall in quarterly sales, the first time revenue at the world’s most valuable publicly traded company has declined in 13 years.As of publication time, shares were down more than 7% without appearing to hit bottom. Revenue was predicted by Apple itself to fall between $50bn and $53bn – it came in on the low end of that range, with a final tally of $50.6bn, a 13% drop. Continue reading...

An anonymous whistleblower claims to have new proof of human rights abuses, galvanising opposition onlineIn a bid to upend years of secrecy in the country dubbed “Africa’s North Korea”, a new Facebook page is publishing documents claiming to show how the Eritrean government abuses its citizens.In just two months, SACTISM – Classified Documents of the Dwindling PFDJ has garnered more than 16,000 followers on the social media site by alleging to have new information about human rights violations committed at the hands of president Isaias Afewerki’s ruling party, the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice. Continue reading...

Google, Uber, Lyft, Ford and Volvo – all developing self-driving car technology – have formed a lobbying group to take on regulation of autonomous vehiclesIf your self-driving car crashes, who gets sued? Google, Uber, and Ford would rather it be you, according to some experts.Tech companies making self-driving cars could become better protected under the law than those car’s owners, experts warn, as the announcement came of a powerful new coalition of automakers and big tech companies forming to take on US government regulations around self-driving vehicles. Continue reading...

Sites charge $100 a year to access private photos and videos of non-porn stars in the nude, usually posted by spurned ex-lovers – but it doesn’t end thereSix years ago, Rebekah Wells Googled her name to see what turned up. The results horrified her: nude photos of herself taken by her ex-boyfriend, along with her name and address, on commercial porn sites such as ImageFlea, ImageEarn and PinkMeth.She went to the police in her home town of Naples, Florida, and a sheriff’s deputy was assigned to her case. One year later she became romantically involved with the deputy, and after the relationship fizzled, Wells claims the police officer threatened to upload a new batch of her nudes. Continue reading...

Ubisoft’s New York-based strategy shooter is the company’s most successful ever release – but players say the experience is being ruined by cheatsIn financial terms, Tom Clancy’s The Division is a hugely successful video game. Released in March by French publisher Ubisoft, this New York-set third-person shooter quickly became the best selling new franchise of all time, generating more than $330m in sales in its first five days. But, just over a month after release, the best selling game in Ubisoft’s 30-year history looks to be heading for catastrophe.The Division has a cheating problem. Not just one, either, but a critical mass of glitches, exploits, and hacks that – in the eyes of the playerbase at least – threaten the game’s immediate and long-term future on the PC. Players stack items for unintended bonuses, farm missions in seconds, and – worst of all – using third-party hacks to cheat in player vs player (PvP) competition. Continue reading...

Company pays authors based on how much of their books have been read, but fraudsters are taking advantage - and it’s not Amazon that suffersAuthors are earning less from Amazon’s new pay-per-page model than they should be, thanks to a rash of scammers taking advantage of the company’s self-publishing platform.The scammers are exploiting a loophole in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited service – which allows subscribers to read an unlimited number of books for a flat monthly fee – to earn much more money from short books than they ever would if they were sold fairly. Continue reading...

Australia records 12.5% of first episode’s piracy via BitTorrent, India comes second, followed by the US and the UKThe first episode of Game of Thrones’ sixth season has become the most-watched program in the history of pay television in Australia – but that’s not the only record it broke after premiering on Monday.Related: Game of Thrones recap: season six, episode one – The Red Woman Continue reading...

World money exchange tells 11,000 financial institutions to update their software after US$81m was stolen from account of Bangladesh central bankSwift, the global financial network that banks use to transfer billions of dollars every day, has warned its customers it is aware of “a number of recent cyber incidents” where attackers had sent fraudulent messages over its system.

BeautifulPeople.com boasts ‘online dating for beautiful people only’, and at first there’s a joy to watching the mighty fall. But it could happen to any of us

Chairman recommends that the body approve the third-largest US cable company’s plan to purchase the second-largest, as well as Bright House Networks

Penetration testing unearths backdoor installed on Facebook’s company servers had been logging employee credentials and exposing securityHackers gained entry to Facebook’s internal corporate network for several months, with access to hundreds of the social network’s employee usernames and passwords.

Mötley Crüe and Sixx:AM co-founder wants to swell the chorus of criticism of Google service from musicians and persuade it to up its payoutsMötley Crüe co-founder Nikki Sixx is the latest musician to criticise YouTube over the royalties it pays out for music video streams. Sixx’s call for the video site to pay more to musicians for using their videos is part of a campaign by a coalition of prominent musicians launching this week, with pressure to be put first on YouTube, then on US legislators.Sixx and James Michael – partner in his current band Sixx:AM – are calling for more artists to speak out and put pressure on YouTube to match the royalty payouts of music streaming rivals. A number of big names are expected to speak out this week. Continue reading...

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...