Technology | The Guardian

Some users claim to have lost their jobs over Google’s Gmail April fool ... while we round up the best of the rest of the day’s gagsThe first of April is normally a day of frothy fun, where newspapers and brands compete to produce the best jokes and the worst puns to fool their readers.But this year some of the more complex pranks did not go quite to plan. Continue reading...

Local law enforcement officials want access to Apple phones to solve crimes but Apple might be able to patch security flaws if secret technique is widely sharedAny day now, Hillar Moore is expecting a call from the FBI.Moore, a district attorney in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has publicly lamented that Apple’s iPhone encryption is keeping local police out of a victim’s phone in a recent murder. On Monday, Moore’s ears perked up when the FBI announced it would drop its court battle with Apple after it figured out a way to pull data from the iPhone of Syed Farook, the San Bernardino gunman. Continue reading...

The firearm that resembles a mobile is ingenious, but surely its creator has missed a trick – a phone that actually is a gun. It’s going to happenUntil so recently the selfie-stick was the top gizmo of choice for gadgety-minded people everywhere. But in the United States, something else is now hogging the limelight: the Ideal Conceal, a .38 calibre handgun that folds up to look exactly like an iPhone-sized smartphone. Unfolded, it fires two shots before needing to be reloaded and costs $395 (£275).Advance orders are flooding in. Its inventor, Kirk Kjellberg of Minnesota, says the idea came to him when he was walking through a restaurant. Being in possession of a “concealed carry” permit, his weapon was just visible. A small child said: “Mommy, mommy, that man’s got a gun!” And Kjellberg says he thought to himself: “There’s got to be another way to carry without bothering other people.” Continue reading...

iOS 9.3.1 update should fix bug and make links on affected iPhone and iPads work again after disruption of Universal Links system by errant third-party appsApple has pushed out an update for iPhones and iPads to fix a bug that caused devices to lock up, batteries to drain and links to be completely inoperative.

Every Friday we apply critical attention to things that don’t normally get it. This is an important function that might hold civilisation together. Or, more likely, not. Drop your suggestions for reviews in the comments or tweet them to @guideguardian Continue reading...

From Soylent to a $700 juice box, men are being praised for releasing us from the prison of food. So why was it low-brow when women did that with SlimFast?I tried explaining Soylent, the protein shake meal replacement popular in Silicon Valley, to my mom and she tilted her head: “Oh, you mean SlimFast?” she said.I balked. No, Soylent is definitely tech, I explained, and it’s on my beat. It has a minimalist label and comes in iterative versions like software (we’re at Soylent 2.0). It has a young white male founder who philosophizes about it and connects it to broader themes of life efficiency and has raised $20m in venture capital funding on its promise of releasing us from the prison of food. Continue reading...

From mistimed jumps to save game mishaps, here are the gaming errors we all make again and againThere are some mistakes that we make habitually. We can’t help ourselves. Even as we’re doing it, a part of our brain is screaming: “This is absolutely the wrong thing to do.” But somehow, before we know it, we’ve gone ahead done it; we’ve bought a ticket to see Batman v Superman.Sometimes those things happen in games too. It doesn’t matter how experienced you are at Call of Duty, there are moments you think you can take out several incoming players at once by charging at them with your pistol and two bullets in the clip. Even if you’ve been playing Tomb Raider games for 10 years you’ll still occasionally walk up to a gigantic chasm and think, I wonder if Lara can survive that fall? And then you discover that she can’t. And the last checkpoint was several miles back. Continue reading...

Andrés Sepúlveda said he and other hackers installed malware to monitor opponents during 2012 campaign as part of ‘black propaganda’ operationA digital dark arts campaign by mercenary hackers helped Enrique Peña Nieto win Mexico’s 2012 presidential election, according to an imprisoned Colombian hacker who says he was involved.Andrés Sepúlveda, an online campaign strategist, claimed he had also helped to manipulate elections in nine countries across Latin America by stealing data, installing malware and creating fake waves of enthusiasm and derision on social media.

For users, it offers a reminder that what they say and do on Reddit is just as likely to be targeted by investigators as Facebook posts and Gmail messages areUS national security authorities may now view Reddit as a way to spy on people.

Antitrust suit claims Travis Kalanick organized price fixing among drivers: ‘Today’s decision confirms that apps are not exempt from the antitrust laws’Travis Kalanick, the chief executive of Uber, has failed to win the dismissal of an antitrust lawsuit accusing him of scheming to drive up prices for passengers who use the popular ride-hailing service.District judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan said on Thursday that Kalanick must face claims he conspired with drivers to ensure they charge prices set by an algorithm in the Uber smartphone app to hail rides, including “surge pricing” during periods of peak demand. Continue reading...

The Breaking Bad and Ride Along actors are to co-star in the Hollywood version of French hit comedy The IntouchablesBreaking Bad star Bryan Cranston will star opposite Ride Along’s Kevin Hart in a US remake of the French smash-hit comedy The Intouchables.

Leonardo Fabbretti says firm thought to have helped FBI access San Bernardino gunman’s phone will help if Apple refusesA grieving father in Italy has written to Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, to beg him to unblock his dead son’s iPhone so he can retrieve the photographs stored on it.

Sorry folks, no Mario, Zelda or Animal Crossing yet: the company’s new app is a quirky social communications tool based around Mii avatarsThe first thing to know about Nintendo’s Miitomo is that it isn’t a game. Not really.The way the company is describing its long-awaited mobile release is “an app from Nintendo that brings out a side of you your friends have never seen before”. So Miitomo isn’t competing directly against Clash Royale, Game of War and Candy Crush Saga. Continue reading...

Ousted marketing officer tweeted that she had been sacked due to outspoken views on feminism, which the company has deniedNintendo has denied that an internet harassment campaign targeting one of its staff was related to its decision to fire her.Alison Rapp, a marketing officer at Nintendo of America’s product development division, Treehouse, wrote a series of tweets on Wednesday evening, informing followers that she was no longer deemed “a good, safe representative of Nintendo”. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and thatSorry, busy morning! Continue reading...

Microsoft is pushing its free upgrade at Windows 7 users and Tom wonders what the benefits are. The answer includes opt-out information for refuseniksYou haven’t answered the most obvious question of all: why should I upgrade from Windows 7 to 10? What are the benefits? Please give a straight answer, which can include technical stuff. TomIn the long term, I don’t think the question is “Why?”, it’s “When?” Eight months after launch, Windows 10 is running on 270m devices and it’s not going away. Some large organisations have already started to move, one of the most notable being the US Defense Department, which has started installing Windows 10 on 4m PCs. Continue reading...

Undertakers in Shanghai provides service for incomplete bodies with face recreation costing up to £540A Chinese funeral home is using 3D printing to manufacture spare parts for dead bodies, state media has reported.The Longhua funeral home in Shanghai is thought to be the first in China to use 3D printing in this manner. Continue reading...

According to a new survey, it takes the majority of hotel guests seven minutes to log on to the Wi-Fi after their arrival. So what’s the hold-up?What do you do first on arriving at a hotel? Check out the pool? Or the view from the balcony? No. Apparently most of us now demand the Wi-Fi code and logon, with a massive 65% admitting to tuning in within seven minutes of arrival, according to a new survey. All I can say, as a frequent traveller, is, what took you so long?Confession: I am an instinctive and habitual Wi-Fi user, the sort who mainlines Instagram and Twitter without much reflection on the implications for my own mental and physical health. Who cares? Continue reading...

A new University of California study has found that subcontracted jobs have expanded rapidly, offering low wages to predominantly black and Latino workersSubcontracted jobs have grown at three times the rate of all private sector jobs in Silicon Valley over the past 24 years, exacerbating the region’s gaping income inequality, according to a new report from the University of California, Santa Cruz.The tech firms whose campuses dominate Silicon Valley are known to employ armies of subcontracted employees as janitors, cafeteria workers, gardeners, security guards and shuttle drivers. Researchers found that growth in subcontracted industries has outpaced overall job growth since 1990 – 54% compared with 18%. Continue reading...

Relying on smart devices and GPS are eroding our map reading and way-finding skills, cautions former president of the Royal Institute of NavigationPeople who rely on satnav could be at risk of losing their ability to navigate, an expert has warned.Writing in the journal Nature, former president of the Royal Institute of Navigation Roger McKinlay argues that our reliance on GPS technology is misplaced and could be eroding our innate way-finding abilities. “If we do not cherish them, our natural navigation abilities will deteriorate as we rely ever more on smart devices,” he wrote.

As research suggests social media could be a mental-health timebomb, what’s a GP to do with app-addled patients? Continue reading...

Facebook liked the VR headset so much it bought the company behind it for $2bn, and most reviewers of the first consumer version are impressedThe Oculus Rift isn’t the first of the new generation of virtual reality (VR) headsets to go on sale – that was Samsung’s Gear VR – and it will face stiff competition in 2016 from HTC’s Vive and Sony’s PlayStation VR among other devices.Still, the consumer launch of the Rift, with its parent company now a $2bn subsidiary of Facebook, is still a big moment for the latest rebirth of VR. Continue reading...

After US government extracts data from San Bernardino iPhone, company says it is committed to increasing products’ securityApple has declared victory in its battle against the FBI, after the government announced it had found a way into the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone that did not require the manufacturer’s help.The company said in a statement: “From the beginning, we objected to the FBI’s demand that Apple build a backdoor into the iPhone because we believed it was wrong and would set a dangerous precedent. As a result of the government’s dismissal, neither of these occurred. This case should never have been brought.” Continue reading...

With the court filing, Silicon Valley and Washington are poised to return to a cold war over the balance between privacy and law enforcement in the age of appsThe US government dropped its court fight against Apple after the FBI successfully pulled data from the iPhone of San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook, according to court records.The development effectively ended a six-week legal battle poised to shape digital privacy for years to come. Instead, Silicon Valley and Washington are poised to return to a simmering cold war over the balance between privacy and law enforcement in the age of apps. Continue reading...

The deal is intended to increase the Japanese company’s presence in North AmericaJapan’s NTT Data has agreed to buy Dell’s IT consulting division for more than $3bn (£2.1bn) to expand in North America and bolster its services business.Related: The mobile makers are coming for the PC market and it’s all Microsoft’s fault Continue reading...

Innovations expert Sandy Plunkett joins panellists in criticising government’s controversial NBN model, but Wyatt Roy says it’s about separating ‘rhetoric and reality’Related: Australia's 'ideas boom' needs more help or it risks failure to launch | Lindsay DavidThe politicisation of the National Broadband Network is a “tragedy” which has held Australia back when it comes to innovation and technological advancement, ABC’s Q&A program has heard. Continue reading...

My uncle, Fred Thomas, who has died aged 85, was a senior lecturer in civil and structural engineering who undertook groundbreaking research into subjects as diverse as the causes of aeroplane crashes and the structural properties of glass.Fred was born in Tenby, son of Hector, a carpenter, and his wife, Eva, and went to Greenhill grammar school. As a young boy, he would make wooden toys for his younger cousins in his father’s workshop. Fred did not go on to have any children, nor did he ever marry. However, he was incredibly close to his immediate and extended family. He was an integral part of family life for my parents, my brother and me for more than 40 years. Continue reading...

Painting of Witch computer had been missing for years and was the subject of a nationwide searchA long-lost portrait of a historic computer – built in 1951 and now the oldest working digital computer in the world – has resurfaced on a cafe bar wall in Manchester.The artist John Yeadon first saw the Witch (the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computation from Harwell) in 1982 in the Museum of Science and Industry in Birmingham. He was fascinated, even though it had become a sad ghost of its former glory at the cutting edge of computing technology. Continue reading...

Hitman’s bite-sized assassinations will keep you coming back for more, Mega Man cements his legacy with an unmissable collection, but Sadame spreads its action too thinly over feudal JapanPS4, Xbox One, PC, Square Enix, cert: 18

A futuristic electric bicycle for which you can 3D print your own sparesIt looks like a cross between a Meccano set and an Ikea lampshade, but the Trayser is, in fact, the latest e-bike from New Zealand firm ETT. It is certainly eye-catching, but all the design flourishes also conceal a remarkably forward-thinking bike. The plastic wraparound shell hides a 42V lithium ion battery which gives a range of 60 miles at up to 15.5mph. It takes 300 minutes to fully charge. To ride, it’s wonderfully comfortable and the electric pedal boost is instant and responsive. But where the Trayser really steals a march on the oppo is that it is the first bike for which you can 3D-print replacement parts. Simply visit shapeways.com, and click and order. If you are feeling imaginative you can even 3D-print your own accessories and build your own unique creation (ettindustries.com).Price: £1,700

Where do you go to test a luxurious 206mph Bentley super car? To a drive-thru McDonald’s, of coursePrice: £156,700

Company finally apologises after ‘Tay’ quickly learned to produce offensive posts, forcing the tech giant to shut it down after just 16 hoursMicrosoft has said it is “deeply sorry” for the racist and sexist Twitter messages generated by the so-called chatbot it launched this week.

It’s not what you’d call poky… I was frankly incredulous at the top speed (as advertised)However ugly your Nissan, you should always think, “It could be worse. I could be in a Cube.” In the X-Trail (which everyone at once called the En-Trail, due to the random splashes of reflective red across the back, which made it look as if its guts were on the outside) the excesses of the brand are toned down. No twiddly bits, just solid respectability, seven seats, six speakers, five-inch screen behind the wheel, seven-inch screen for the maddeningly slow satnav, leather everywhere, all the signs of being a grownup and as much safety as you can pad into a car without taking its wheels off.The Tekna is the range-topper, with a six-speed manual engine and 1.6 litres of petrolly promise that it didn’t live up to. I got used to the shape, and when it came to say goodbye, you could say I almost liked it, and not just because it is hard not to like orange things once you get to know them. But it’s heavy for its engine, and the acceleration is a bit pathetic. I caught the children making side eyes of embarrassment as I tried to race Ocado vans and lawnmowers off traffic lights. “There’s no point pretending you’re not with the car,” I explained, “when you’re in the car.” “It’s you we’re pretending not to be with,” they whispered. “It’s your aggressive driving style and age-inappropriate hand gestures.” So I sang Abba over the top and admired the power-opening panoramic roof. Continue reading...

Surgeon Shafi Ahmed will carry out procedure for viewers to watch using mobile phone and VR headsetAn operation on a British cancer patient is to be live-streamed around the world using virtual reality technology designed to make viewers feel as if they are in the operating theatre.It will be performed by Shafi Ahmed, a London surgeon who has been at the forefront of pioneering virtual reality technology in surgery, and who described next month’s operation as a gamechanger for healthcare innovation and education. Continue reading...

Mike Gatto, who has received thousands of dollars in donations from Google and Ford, proposed one of two bills that would relax state rules for automated carsA new bill in California’s legislature that aims to smooth the path for fully driverless vehicles on the state’s public roads is being proposed by an assembly member who has received thousands of dollars from Google.

Two million people are already using Slack to chat, send emojis and encourage creativity at work. Nasa and Harvard are on board – will your company be next?Erica Baker likes poker. So did many of the engineers she spent 10 years working with at Google, in the California headquarters of one of the world’s most valuable technology companies. When she was eventually invited to a poker night with other engineers, the group of white, male colleagues fell silent as she walked into the room. “That did not feel good,” she says. “I get that it’s comfortable to be around people like you, but it’s also pretty important to be around people who are not like you – it helps one grow as a human being. That was the point where I started to get fed up with Google.”Around the same time, in late November 2014, Baker joined a local Black Lives Matter protest after the shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer. When she posted a photo to Twitter, Stewart Butterfield, the co-founder of Slack, a new chat tool for use at work, sent her a message: “Stay safe.” She says, “I just thought, ‘Holy crap – that’s a tech CEO!’ ” She left Google to join Slack as an engineer in May 2015. Continue reading...

Companies join forces with Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo to tell UK government that important amendments to bill are requiredSix of the biggest American technology firms have combined forces to call for major changes to the Investigatory Powers bill, commonly known as the snooper’s charter.The firms warn that “important amendments are required” to create a bill that will not set dangerous precedents “which may be copied elsewhere and have wider ramifications for all parties, both in the UK and overseas”. Continue reading...

Department of Justice indicts hackers linked to Iran government for disrupting computer systems in first shift in US-Iranian relations since nuclear treatyThe US Department of Justice has unsealed an indictment against seven Iranian hackers, charging them with disrupting computer systems at American banks and a small dam north of New York between 2011 and 2013, accusing the men of working on behalf of the Iranian government.The allegations mark a shift in US-Iranian relations after a relative detente as the two countries negotiated a nuclear treaty. News reports have long linked the attacks to the Islamic Republic, and though the indictment against the men has been sitting on Justice Department shelves for more than a year it was unsealed partly due to congressional pressure, people familiar with the case said. Continue reading...

Starboard Value criticized the struggling tech company for mismanagement and poor performance Thursday, and set out plans to replace executive boardYahoo’s entire board should be axed, activist investors at hedge fund Starboard Value said on Thursday, setting out plans to replace them with their own picks, including Starboard managing partner Jeffrey C Smith.“[W]e have been extremely disappointed with Yahoo’s dismal financial performance, poor management execution, egregious compensation and hiring practices, and general lack of accountability and oversight by the Board,” wrote Smith in a letter to fellow shareholders. “We believe the board clearly lacks the leadership, objectivity, and perspective needed to make decisions that are in the best interests of shareholders.” Continue reading...

Pornographic content could be as instrumental in the VR wars as it was in the VHS age – or it could be a sideshow for weirdosOne of the oldest adages of technology is that where porn goes, success follows. It’s helped VHS beat out Betamax; it gave Blu-ray the final victory over HDDVD (although Sony then backed down before HD online streaming provided the nail in the coffin to both formats); and it helped spread faster internet connections, firstly providing a reason to upgrade to dial-up and then to broadband.So could it be about to provide the same killing blow in the virtual reality wars, before they’ve even started? Continue reading...

Critics say targeting Republican counters hacking collective’s tradition of not taking sides in political contests and others allege movement is being hijackedThe ripple effects of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy have led to a civil war in the Republican party. But they have also had the unexpected consequence of leading to a subterranean civil war within Anonymous, the mysterious hacking collective.Related: Anonymous collective declares ‘total war’ on Donald Trump, again Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg says virtual social worlds could be the future. But what’s it actually like in one? Keith Stuart visits AltSpace and finds the experience ... oddI’m standing in front of a decorative garden talking to a guy from Germany about PC specifications. This is not really what I was hoping for from the future of online social communication.The place I’m in is AltSpace, a virtual reality social world. It was launched in 2013 by AltSpaceVR, a small startup based in Redwood City, California. Although it’s early days for virtual reality as a consumer phenomenon, there’s been a lot of interest in the idea of virtual chatrooms – AltSpace VR has already attracted more than $15m (£10.6m) in venture capital funding, and Mark Zuckerberg has talked about multi-user VR as the future of social media. There are alternatives to AltSpace, such as vTime and VRChat but this one is getting a lot of interest due to its multi-platform compatibility and array of features. That’s why I decided to don a HTC Vive and spend an hour in the virtual world of chat. Continue reading...

Mark Backler and Molly Carroll join Keith Stuart and Jordan Erica Webber to chat about GDC 2016, shooter Tom Clancy’s The Division, and Stardew Valley, a game that will scratch your digital domestication itchThe video game industry has already taken 2016 by storm. With San Francisco’s annual Game Developers Conference seeing record numbers of attendees, and Ubisoft’s The Division becoming the fastest-selling original IP in games history – and generating $300m in the process – there’s good reason to be excited if you’re a video game fan.If first-person shooters are not your cup of tea, there’s Stardew Valley, a new role-playing adventure game that allows you to go fishing, plant seeds and fall in love.

Attempt to engage millennials with artificial intelligence backfires hours after launch, with TayTweets account citing Hitler and supporting Donald TrumpMicrosoft’s attempt at engaging millennials with artificial intelligence has backfired hours into its launch, with waggish Twitter users teaching its chatbot how to be racist.The company launched a verified Twitter account for “Tay” – billed as its “AI fam from the internet that’s got zero chill” – early on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Facebook happily hosts Kim Kardashian’s cleavage, but suspended users posting images of topless Aboriginal women for ‘violating community standards’. Leigh Alexander wonders, just whose standards are we talking about?Social technology, in the words of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, would “make the world more open and connected”, and unite the international community. It promises a new, global platform for cultural storytelling – a significant opportunity to know one another better than ever before.But major technology platforms are led by western capitalist ideals, and one major consequence of this is that not all stories are treated equally. On Facebook, stories and images of famous women’s nudity are celebrated – while the cultural histories of other women around the world are erased as “inappropriate”. Continue reading...

Sir Richard Branson says Virgin will partner with Boom to build and test plane to succeed where Concorde failed – ‘this lets you commute’ across oceansSir Richard Branson is hoping to bring back supersonic transatlantic passenger flights, and this time they will be “affordable”.Branson, who has already launched plans for $250,000-a-ticket flights into space, on Wednesday announced that his Virgin empire would help build a new generation of supersonic jets. Virgin has also signed an option to buy 10 of the planes to hopefully reintroduce 3.5-hour passenger flights between London and New York 13 years after Concorde was decommissioned. Continue reading...

‘White petroleum’ powers everything from electric cars to mobile phones, and half the earth’s resources come from the salt flats of Chile, Argentina and BoliviaFar from the soy and cattle that dominate its vast fertile pampas, Argentina harbours another valuable commodity that is rocketing in price and demand and luring newly welcomed foreign investors.Lithium, the so-called “white petroleum”, drives much of the modern world. It forms a small but essentially irreplaceable component of rechargeable batteries, used in consumer devices like mobile phones and electric cars. It also has pharmaceutical and other applications. Over half of the earth’s identified resources of the mineral are found in South America’s “lithium triangle”, an otherworldly landscape of high-altitude lakes and bright white salt flats that straddles Chile, Argentina and Bolivia. Continue reading...

Durham police have issued a warning to Steven Knox, the ex-partner of Johnson’s sister, for allegedly posting images of the schoolgirlDurham police have taken action against the ex-partner of Adam Johnson’s sister for allegedly harassing the footballer’s teenage victim on Facebook.Officers issued a harassment warning to Steven Knox, 29, for allegedly posting images of the schoolgirl and claiming that she “bragged and lied”. Continue reading...

Following the loss of 55 jobs last year, remaining staff are made redundant as the Cheshire-based studio closes due to “changes to the European studios structure”Sony has announced that it is closing UK-based video game developer Evolution Studios, developer of the World Rally Championship and MotorStorm titles, as well as the more recent PS4 exclusive, Driveclub.In a statement to gamesindustry.biz, a Sony spokesperson said the decision was made after one of its “regular reviews” of the groups that make up SCE Worldwide Studios: “As part of this process we have reviewed and assessed all current projects and plans for the short and medium term and have decided to make some changes to the European studios structure.” Continue reading...