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...

Why would Google want to strip out its famous blue? Perhaps the money’s too good to refuseGoogle searches could soon look very different: the company is testing a new version of its results page featuring black links, in the place of the familiar blue.Users began reporting the visual change on Sunday, suggesting that Google is embarking on one of its famous “A/B tests”. The company regularly makes a small change for a subset of users, examining how they respond before deciding whether or not to roll it out to the wider userbase. Continue reading...

Stopping revenge porn is complicated by blurring the context of images and by hosts’ reliance on abuses being reportedOne of the most difficult things about tackling revenge porn is the sheer number of channels by which it is distributed.Despite high-profile convictions of site operators such as Kevin Bollaert, sent to jail in the US April 2015, most revenge porn sites are nowhere near as conspicuous, organised or open. Continue reading...

Rise in sales of music, DVDs and games over the last quarter is HMV’s best performance since it went into administrationHMV has reclaimed is position as the second biggest entertainment retailer in the UK as high street chains enjoy a revival against their online competitors.HMV recorded a 2% year-on-year rise in sales of music, DVDs and games over the last quarter, giving it a market share of 16.9%, ahead of Tesco’s 16.1%. Continue reading...

The series is going back to the first world war, and while EA Dice creative director Lars Gustavsson is intrigued by the design, its historical challenges are the most pressing concernIt’s been rumoured for months, but on Friday, Electronic Arts confirmed that the next title in its Battlefield series of military shooters will be set during the first world war. While the rival Call of Duty titles have been marching ever further into the future, Battlefield 1 is an attempt to re-engage with fans of the genre, who fell for titles like Battlefield 1942, Medal of Honor and the original Call of Duty games with their depiction of historically authentic scenarios.“This was the dawn of all-out war, the switch from the old world to the new world,” says creative director Lars Gustavsson. “Battlefield has always been about the land, sea and air war experience. This was something we had to do.” Continue reading...

Staff error meant anyone receiving 56 Dean Street’s HIV clinic newsletter could see email addresses of all other recipientsAn NHS clinic in London has been fined £180,000 for a serious breach of the privacy of more than 700 users of an HIV service.Patients and service users who were on the HIV clinic email list of 56 Dean Street, a Soho-based sexual health clinic, said at the time of the breach they were terrified it could leave them open to blackmail or public outing. Continue reading...

Streaming service, which has had a difficult relationship with the band, says it is looking forward to making A Moon Shaped Pool availableSpotify has said it hopes to stream Radiohead’s new album, A Moon Shaped Pool, as soon as it can. A Moon Shaped Pool, the Oxford band’s ninth album, was released on Sunday 8 May and is currently available through Apple Music and Tidal.Related: Radiohead: A Moon Shaped Pool review – something they've never achieved before Continue reading...

Megumi Igarashi fined after distributing data that would allow 3D printing of her genitals in order to raise funds for boatA Japanese artist who made a kayak modelled on her vagina has been found guilty of breaking the country’s obscenity laws, in a case that has invited widespread ridicule of attitudes towards images of female genitalia.Megumi Igarashi, who works under the pseudonym Rokudenashiko – or good-for-nothing girl – was arrested in July 2014 after she distributed data that enabled recipients to make 3D prints of her vagina. Continue reading...

Move is part of attempt to rein in content of country’s burgeoning and unregulated live-streaming sectorChina has reportedly outlawed the “erotic” online consumption of bananas after the president, Xi Jinping, called for steps to “rehabilitate” his country’s “cyber-ecology”.Speaking at a Communist party summit last year, Xi said action was needed to promote “civilised behaviour” on China’s already heavily controlled internet.

Texan city rejects ballot which would have repealed strict new regulationsRide-sharing services Uber and Lyft are suspending operations in Austin, Texas, after the city’s voters rejected a proposal that would have allowed the companies to self-regulate their drivers.Instead, the voters upheld stricter regulations that the city council passed in December: ride-sharing drivers are required to pass fingerprint-based background checks, clearly mark their cars with the ride-sharing company’s logo, and not pick up or drop off their passengers in certain lanes of the city’s streets. Continue reading...

Seventy-six cities and regions are using Strava Metro data to help assess and shape transport policySheila Lyons recalls the way Oregon used to collect data on how many people rode bikes. “It was very haphazard, two-hour counts done once a year,” said the woman in charge of cycling policy for the state government. “Volunteers, sitting on the street corner because they wanted better bike facilities. Pathetic, really.”But in 2013 a colleague had an idea. She recorded her own bike rides using an app called Strava, and thought: why not ask the company to share its data? And so was born Strava Metro, both an inadvertent tech business spinoff and a similarly accidental urban planning tool, one that is now quietly helping to reshape streets in more than 70 places around the world and counting. Continue reading...

After eight years of bringing Tech Weekly to your ears, we’re preparing a new podcast – it will be better, bigger, more human and ... it needs you! While we get everything ready, tell us the one thing about tech you’d like explainedWe launched our technology podcast Tech Weekly the year the first iPhone was released. Think about that. Most of us were still making calls on flip phones, MySpace was still relevant, and people were still renting DVDs from Blockbuster. That was eight years ago, and needless to say, Tech Weekly has come a long way.We’ve covered topics such as how social media is used in Middle-Eastern conflicts and President Obama’s Reddit AMA session, and done deep dives into things like ISIS’ use of tech and why your Uber rating is actually quite important.

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

Ratchet & Clank and Donkey Kong Country are superbly updated, while Mario & Sonic at the Olympics is a tame cash-inRatchet & Clank

After her husband’s death, the Facebook chief operating officer says she has begun to recognize the challenges faced by women raising children aloneFacebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg has marked Mother’s Day by paying tribute to single mothers, saying she never realized how hard it was to be a single parent until her husband died a year ago.Related: Sheryl Sandberg's moving tribute to the husband who died: 'Dave was my rock' Continue reading...

Sussex police decision to caution man, despite evidence he targeted five women, comes as data shows most revenge porn offences do not result in criminal chargeThe mother of a 15-year-old victim of revenge porn has criticised police for letting the perpetrator off with a caution despite evidence he targeted five women over several months.The decision not to prosecute the man comes after figures released last month revealed that most offences of revenge porn do not result in a criminal charge. Continue reading...

Victims and their loved ones report sense of powerlessness in face of flawed laws and mixed police responsesOn a business estate in Devon, Jade sits at a computer screen and hovers her mouse over an innocent selfie of a young woman from Scotland. In a matter of seconds, she is led down the internet’s tunnels and diversions deep into what was once the private world of the 21-year-old.

Project marking presenter’s 90th birthday features footage from series including Zoo Quest, Planet Earth, and Frozen PlanetHe may have just become a nonagenarian, but Sir David Attenborough shows no signs of slowing down as he launches a mobile app offering more than 1,000 clips of his work for the BBC.The Story of Life app, which is in development, marks the presenter’s 90th birthday on 8 May and aims to bring Attenborough’s work to a younger generation focused more on iPhones than TV screens. It will be available in the Autumn. Continue reading...

BMW’s flagship saloon is the epitome of elegant discretion. And to drive it you barely need to lift a finger…Price: £66,200

Eye-catching and robust, the Pilgrims from Bowman is a lot tougher than it looksCycling into the office the other day my eye was caught by the bike of a fellow rider. It was a proper head-turner – anodised paint job, tapered carbon forks, T-section top tube – and a brand I hadn’t heard of: Bowman. I guessed it was one of those poncey pricey frames that bankrupt you and then leave you too terrified to actually enjoy it. But it turns out Bowman builds rugged, rideable frames for the year-round, no-nonsense cyclist. The firm is the brainchild of Neil Webb who, after 20 years in the industry, decided to go it alone. His bikes are designed at his base on the outskirts of southeast London and then built in Taiwan. There are currently five models, each named after a landmark familiar to cyclists in the southeast– Palace, Pilgrims, Foots Cray and Layhams. This one is the Pilgrims (named after the Pilgrims’ Way). It features generous ‘RoadPlus’ geometry which gives you the clearance to fit wider tyres or mudguards so you can swap in bigger rubber and turn off the road to tackle trails. In all you’ll get bespoke looks for Sundays, but a sturdy worker for weekdays (Bowman Cyles).Price: £750 (frameset only, complete bikes from £1,500)

Big-screen adaptations of computer games, with A-list cameos, produce big cash. Some of it could be used to produce groundbreaking artBack in 2009 a Finnish company called Rovio launched its 52nd video game. Its premise was simple: players would use their smartphone touchscreen – still a relative novelty two years after the first iPhone came out – to control a catapult. Swine flu was in the news, so the enemies would be pigs. The missiles? A flock of angry birds.That game reportedly cost less than £100,000 to make. The numbers involved in The Angry Birds Movie, which arrives in cinemas 13 May, are rather larger. There’s an estimated $80m production budget and $100m set aside for marketing. Sony has even splashed out on the ultimate status symbol: an A-list cameo. Sean Penn, we were informed in April, will play a bird called Terence who communicates only through low, rumbling growls. Continue reading...

Commissioning teams experiment with using data from Twitter and Facebook as well as from 6 million-plus people who have signed up for BBC iDThe BBC is following Netflix in using online viewing data to help it decide which programmes to make.

The long-running series features biplanes, battleships and the earliest tanks in an attempt to combat Call of Duty’s move into future warWhile Call of Duty is heading far into the future with this year’s installment, its annual first-person shooter rival, Battlefield, is heading in the opposite direction. Publisher Electronic Arts has announced that the latest title in its military action series will be titled Battlefield 1, and takes place during the first world war.Featuring a number of battles from throughout the conflict, developer EA Dice says it will offer vast environments, taking in trench warfare on the Western front, as well as combat in the Italian Alps, the deserts of Arabia and through besieged French towns. As usual, the game features weapons and vehicles accurate to the timescale, including the fighter planes and tanks that heralded a new era of mechanised warfare. Players will be able to ride horses, though its not clear whether there will be cavalry charges. Continue reading...

In April, Zuckerberg talked of ‘fearful voices building walls’ – but Facebook insists that sponsorship of Republican convention is not an endorsement

Bitcoin Foundation’s chief scientist, who supported Craig Wright’s claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, no longer allowed to make changes to currency’s codePoor Gavin Andresen.First he publicly backs Craig Wright, saying that the Australian computer scientist really is the man who created bitcoin under the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. Then, when Wright’s own promised evidence falls apart – utterly disintegrates, really, faster than a tissue left in your pocket when you wash a pair of jeans on the spin cycle – he can only respond “what the heck?” On Thursday, it became clear that Wright wasn’t even going to try to provide any other evidence, and Andresen started mulling platitudes, tweeting: “‘we are all Satoshi’ is such a lovely idea; might say ‘yes’ when asked ‘are you?’” Continue reading...

The Strong museum has announced the latest additions to its collection of classic games, spanning the history of the mediumMario the plumber may have got there first, but Sonic was always going to catch up. The Strong museum in Rochester, New York, has announced the latest six inductees to its video game hall of fame – and Sega’s iconic hedgehog is among them. Continue reading...

Uber rival will road-test fleet of autonomous Chevrolet Bolt electric taxis within a yearDriverless taxis could hit the streets in a matter of years after Lyft – a rival to private car-hailing app Uber – announced plans to test them on US roads.Detroit-based automotive firm General Motors and Lyft will road-test a fleet of autonomous Chevrolet Bolt electric taxis within a year, as the driverless car revolution gathers pace. Continue reading...

Google’s artificial intelligence company hits back in row over data-sharing agreement for medical recordsGoogle’s DeepMind has hit back at criticism of its partnership with London’s Royal Free hospital to develop an app that helps doctors and nurses rapidly identify and treat acute kidney injuries.DeepMind’s co-founder, Mustafa Suleyman, said the company was better placed than any other to handle sensitive medical data, given its long history of securing highly personal information from other fields. He said: “As Googlers, we have the very best privacy and secure infrastructure for managing the most sensitive data in the world. That’s something we’re able to draw upon as we’re such a core part of Google.” Continue reading...

In this podcast originally published in February 2011, we discuss how the Egyptian government was able to cut off 80% of the country’s internet – and find out about the technologies used to get around the restrictionsJoin Aleks Krotoski, Jemima Kiss and Charles Arthur as they tackle technology news.

The sharing economy exists in a legal grey area beyond the reach of hard-won civil rights laws, and black users say they experience discrimination as a result

Meetings come at a critical time for tech giant as it faces a flurry of problems in the countryApple chief executive Tim Cook plans to visit Beijing later this month to meet high-level government officials, at a time when the company is facing setbacks in its most important overseas market, a source said.

Nathan Drake returns for one last treasure hunt, resulting in a beautiful and exciting gaming experience that transcends it flawsThere have been very few video game characters as well conceived as Nathan Drake. Exuding charm and determination, strength and vulnerability, he is the sort of male lead great Hollywood screenwriters aspire to create, but that video games have tended to bypass in favour of gritty, cynical sociopaths on mindless quests for retribution. Nathan is a character you care for and want to protect, even when he makes awful decisions that will hurt the people he loves. That is great writing.In Uncharted 4 he gets the conclusion he and his fans deserve – a rollicking, globe-trotting adventure that manages to be funny and exciting, yet also touched with sadness. We soon begin to realise that Nathan’s quest to discover Libertalia, the fabled anarchist utopia set up by pirate Henry Avery, is symbolic of his whole career as a treasure hunter. This is a story about hubris, obsession and self-denial, and gradually, throughout the game, we discover that these are personality quirks shared between Nathan and Henry, as well as generations of other adventurers who set out to find Avery’s haul and died in the trying. Continue reading...

Passengers to enjoy streaming service aboard planes from next year as airline hails decision to wait for more advanced inflight web technologyBritish Airways passengers will be able to stream films on transatlantic flights from next year after the airline’s owners, IAG, announced a deal to install what it claims will be the fastest Wi-Fi in the air.While BA has lagged behind competitors in providing Wi-Fi on its flights, Willie Walsh, the IAG chief executive, said technological advances have vindicated the decision to wait. Continue reading...

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

What is it like to be a NextUp contest winner, one of 16 hopefuls chosen as emerging stars by YouTube and trained to be the next PewDiePie or Zoella“If people are learning about John Stuart Mill and what he thought about utilitarianism, that’s fine. Nobody really gets angry about that. But if you’re talking about critical gender theory, or critical race theory or feminism or transphobia, that’s when people get a lot more touchy … ”Olly Lennard may not be your idea of an average YouTuber. Rather than playing games or giving makeup tips, his channel dishes out the syllabus from his masters degree in philosophy, one 5-10 minute video at a time. Continue reading...

Fast food chain plans roadshow of agricultural shows around UK to connect consumers with modern farming realitiesMcDonald’s is to tour agricultural events around Britain with a roadshow that uses virtual reality to bring people closer to the fast food chain’s supplier farms.The company will invite visitors to don headsets allowing them on to virtual farms, where they can drive a tractor and help harvest the potatoes for its fries. They can also go behind the scenes with a virtual tour of supplier farms producing eggs, milk and beef for McDonald’s 1,250 UK restaurants. Continue reading...

Barry Chang is stuck between Apple on one side not paying for his infrastructure proposal and frustrated citizens on the other who see their roads too crowdedThe last time the mayor of Cupertino walked into Apple – the largest company in his small Californian town and, it so happens, the most valuable company in the world – he hoped to have a meeting to talk about traffic congestion.Barry Chang barely made it into the lobby when Apple’s security team asked him to leave, he said.

An open letter sent through tech’s trade bodies will pressure politicians on raft of policies, including support for controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership trade dealFacebook, Apple, Amazon and a host of top technology companies are planning to publicly urge the next US president to support a swath of new regulation that would make it easier for them to hire highly skilled workers for overseas, Reuters reports.In an open letter expected to be published on Wednesday, a host of trade bodies representing technology firms will lay out 12 policy recommendations including pledging support for the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, urging more “narrowly targeted government access to user data” and recognition of encryption as a “critical security tool”. Continue reading...