Technology | The Guardian

Mike and his wife are getting too much spam in their BT Internet mailboxes. What can they do to stop it?My wife and I have never received more than three or four spam emails each week for over two decades. Recently we started getting large volumes of spam. We are with BT but tend to use eM Client for our emails using the IMAP system. eM Client can dump these into Junk and blacklist the domain, but this does not stop the spam emails, which are now five a day at least. Neither BT nor eM Client nor Sophos (our anti-virus company) have any ideas about how to stop this happening, other than to get a new email address. Do we just have to live with it? Mike

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

New technology is revolutionising modern farming, but this brave new world of robot farms and hi-tech sensors could have consequences for rural livelihoodsAround the world, but especially in the developing world, food and farming systems continue to rely on 20th century technology. But this is changing. The same information technologies that brought us the internet and transformations in medicine are now revolutionising farming. It’s a new era for agriculture and it’s taking off in at least two distinct areas.

Privacy activists gathered outside San Francisco’s Apple Store to defend the corporation in its battle with the FBI, with more rallies planned across the USWhen about two dozen privacy advocates stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the downtown San Francisco Apple store on Wednesday, it may have been the first time a demonstration was held in support of the tech company.“It’s not really a protest,” said Cindy Cohn, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “We’re here in support of Apple.” Continue reading...

New laws allow copyright owners to apply to federal court to force internet service providers to block access to sitesVillage Roadshow and Foxtel are filing lawsuits seeking to block piracy-related websites in Australia, according to reports confirmed by Foxtel and the federal court.ABC reported the suits would be filed on Thursday in the federal court using laws passed in June to combat piracy. Continue reading...

Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center had lost access to its computer systems since 5 February after hackers installed a virus that encrypted their filesA Los Angeles hospital hit by ransomware swallowed the bitter pill: it paid off the hackers.Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center had lost access to its computer systems since 5 February after hackers installed a virus that encrypted their computer files. The only out was if the hospital paid the hackers $17,000 worth of bitcoins, the digital currency.

Social networking site points to violations of community standards as companies take a hit in an industry to which social media is essentialFacebook has recently launched an aggressive campaign to rid its sites of some cannabis-related material, deleting or suspending dozens of accounts operated by marijuana businesses, most of which had operated for years without so much as a warning about offensive material.“We tried to log into Instagram, and a message said we violated their policy, but they won’t say what that violation is,” said Rick Scarpello, CEO of Incredibles, a Denver-based edible company. “I’ve written them every day, saying I’m not doing anything illegal and please reinstate my account.” Continue reading...

Online retailer headhunts Frances Russell for senior role amid signals that company will launch own-label fashion brandAmazon is in talks with former Marks & Spencer womenswear boss Frances Russell as it works on plans to gatecrash the fashion business with an own-label clothing brand.Rumours that Amazon is about to launch a fashion label were fuelled earlier this month when it began advertising for roles such as a “fit specialist”, “inventory manager” and “merchandiser” on its online jobs site. Continue reading...

Tim Cook publicly attacks the US government for asking Apple to take an ‘unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers’Apple has hit back after a US federal magistrate ordered the company to help the FBI unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters, with chief executive Tim Cook describing the demand as “chilling”.The court order focuses on Apple’s security feature that slows down anyone trying to use “brute force” to gain access to an iPhone by guessing its passcode. In a letter published on the company’s website, Cook responded saying Apple would oppose the order and calling for public debate. Continue reading...

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

Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center’s computer system was infected with ransomware, which has rendered records inaccessible until $3.6m bounty is paidA cyberattack has sent doctors and nurses at a large Los Angeles hospital back to the dark ages – or at least back to the pre-electronic health record days of the 1990s.The computer systems at the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center were, according to a report on NBC, infected on 5 February with ransomware, a computer virus that encrypts a target’s files, locking the owner out of their own data until a bounty is paid. Continue reading...

Move would allow the company to pay shareholders without having to repatriate any of $177bn it holds overseas at lower tax rates than in USApple announced it was issuing bonds estimated in value at $12bn on Tuesday, despite a current cash reserve of $215bn.The bond issue, the latest in a series of huge debt issues, will be used largely to return money to shareholders without repatriating any of the estimated $177bn it holds overseas at a tax rate lower than it would be charged in the US. Continue reading...

More traditional European postal services could be impacted by UberRUSH, an experiment in on-demand delivery, as the startup follows a growing trendEurope’s postal companies – already under pressure from Amazon – could soon face a challenge from Uber, which is moving into deliveries, and from other startups offering similar services.

The tech industry sees Michael Bloomberg, who is fiscally conservative and socially liberal, as one of its own – the hero to Donald Trump’s ‘bad billionaire’Michael Bloomberg may feel that his recent hints at a 2016 run for the White House have barely registered in a presidential year dominated by big characters and unexpected twists.After the initial stir caused by news the former New York mayor was considering entering the 2016 race as a centrist, independent candidate, he has quickly receded to the shadows, barely discussed by either Democratic or Republican candidates. Continue reading...

We compare Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, Deezer and Amazon Prime Music to see which hit the right notes for your on-demand listeningMusic streaming is on the rise: in 2015 in the UK fans played 26.8bn songs on audio-streaming services alone, with another 26.9bn streams of music videos on services like YouTube.

Report says users of adblockers are likely to be tech-savvy and see fewer ads overall

A new 3D printer which uses biodegradable materials to form a tissue shape and living cells as ‘ink’ could be used to print tissues and organsA bioprinter – a three dimensional printer that uses living cells in suspension as its ink, and injection nozzles that can follow a CT scan blueprint – brings the dream of transplant surgery a step nearer: a bespoke body part grown in a laboratory and installed by a robot surgeon.Scientists and clinicians began exploring tissue culture for transplant surgery more than 20 years ago. But researchers in the US report in Nature Biotechnology that they have harnessed a sophisticated, custom-designed 3D printer to print living muscle, cartilage and bone to repair battlefield injury. Continue reading...

Creative Cloud for Mac update removed the first folder in alphabetical order without permission, even if it had nothing to do with AdobeAdobe has pulled an update for its Creative Cloud desktop application for Mac computers after users complained that it was deleting important files from their machines without reason or warning.

The concept artist Kan Muftic, who has worked on games such as the Batman: Arkham series, Bioshock 2 and Destiny, on his diverse and abstract craftWhat’s your background?I’m a concept artist and illustrator, though I also do directing. For the past 10 years, I’ve mainly been doing concept art for video games and the film industry. Continue reading...

‘Design issue’ that causes power problems for £1,000+ single-port laptop prompts replacement programmeApple is recalling USB-C power cables for its new £1,000+ 12in laptop owing to a “design issue” which means they will fail to charge the computer, the company says.

The latest trends, from Fabulous Beasts, the toys-to-life game of building blocks of animals, to Mecha Monsters, real-world battling robots that work with a digital gameThere has been an explosion in the number of video games that are altered and unlocked by toys. This “toys-to-life” concept is simple: place small figurines on a platform connected to a games console, and those characters magically appear in-game. Continue reading...

A Quiet Passion actor suggests that celebrated 19th-century American poet was far from cut off, and would have been ‘emailing and tweeting all day long’Related: A Quiet Passion review - Terence Davies' Emily Dickinson biopic finds beauty in the little thingsContrary to received opinion, American poet Emily Dickinson was not uncommunicative and would have enjoyed modern social media, said Cynthia Nixon, the former Sex and the City actor who plays Dickinson in the new film, A Quiet Passion. Continue reading...

The Virgin Atlantic flight bound for New York turned back soon after passing over the west coast of IrelandPolice are investigating reports that a laser was shone at an aircraft that was forced to return to Heathrow airport on Sunday night when one of the crew fell ill.Related: BA pilot's eye damaged by 'military' laser shone into cockpit at Heathrow Continue reading...

Why do newspaper culture pages and serious radio and TV largely ignore the biggest entertainment medium in the world?Why do video games receive so little coverage in mainstream cultural media? It’s a question that’s troubled me for years – I even made a programme about it for Radio 4. Games are the largest entertainment medium in the world. And yet newspaper culture pages tend not to cover them (pace Observer Tech Monthly). Cultural programmes on TV and radio do a fun segment about games once a quarter at best while reserving discussion and analysis for interpretive dance or experimental opera.It’s very weird for me: my novels, which sell tens of thousands of copies, are shortlisted for prizes that appear on the news. My games, which have sold millions of copies, don’t make the news. Film and TV Baftas are a news story. Games Baftas are an industry event. Continue reading...

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

This good-looking gesture control device lets you browse the web or operate a slideshow without the need for a joystick or mouseI’d seen videos of the Myo before I received one. The black wearable device had always struck me as looking cool and slightly futuristic. As someone who speaks and presents often, here was a chance to take my “cool presentation” factor up a notch.Wearing the Myo, my hopes and dreams faded. Rather than being light and inconspicuous, it felt clunky. It was also cold – I hadn’t noticed the metal sensors in the promo videos. It felt as if I had a bionic arm. Continue reading...

A carbon-framed bike that breaks the magical £1,000 barrier and still rides as good as it looksFor cycling fans, the word Eastway is loaded with history. The original circuit was built in London in the 70s as a traffic-free, road-racing track, and many of the sport’s greats spun their pedals on it, including Eddy Merckx. The ring was finally bulldozed to make way for the Olympic Park in 2006, but the name lives on in this British brand. The range has just been relaunched and the emphasis is now on ‘affordable performance’. If that’s what you are after, the Emitter R4 ticks both boxes. It performs well (it’s light, responsive and fast) and it’s affordable. Spending £1,000 on a bike never sounds like a steal, but believe me, for a carbon frame topped off with this level of kit, it is. My only quibble is the name: Emitter sounds like a projectile-vomiting baby… (wiggle.co.uk)Price: £950

Market hysteria has hit Twitter, with Wall Street and the site’s owners agreeing that it should be bigger and more like Facebook. They’re both wrong‘Twitter shares drop on faltering user growth,” said the headline last week. It turned out that the company had just released its last quarterly return for 2015. It had revenues of $710m (£490m) and a net loss of $90m, which means that – compared with the same quarter last year – revenue was up 90% and losses were down by 27%. If you know anything about technology companies, especially those with a global reach, this looks about par for the course: the company is on track to break even and reach eventual profit. Yet the technology babblesphere is full of fevered speculation about whether Twitter “has a future”. And the stock market, ever attentive to hysteria, marked the shares down accordingly.Insofar as all this hullabaloo had any rational basis, it lay in the revelation that Twitter’s active user base had declined from 307 million monthly active users to 305 million. Viewed through the distorting prism of Wall Street and the tech commentariat, this is apparently a catastrophe. Why? Because it has stopped growing! “So Twitter user growth (excluding SMS) has now declined,” tweeted one excitable commentator. “Brutal.” Continue reading...

In 1967, Lawrence ‘Larry’ Luckham was an operations manager at Bell Labs in Oakland, California. He brought a camera into work to capture a day in the life at a company churning out some of the biggest technological advances of the decade Continue reading...

Scientist Moshe Vardi tells colleagues that change could come within 30 years, with few professions immune to effect of advanced artificial intelligence

Lisa Markwell says senior staff ‘depressed’ at paper closures but feel organisation will come goodA culture in which people are more willing to pay for overpriced coffee than a newspaper ensured the downfall of the Independent papers after three decades in print, a senior executive has said.Lisa Markwell, editor of the Independent on Sunday, paid tribute to the Lebedev family for their investment in the titles since 2010, but said the news industry must search its soul to find a sustainable way of doing business in a changing media environment.

It’s trying to look kooky but grown up, like a stilt walker who still manages to look sexy

PCVA says company should have warned users their phones could be disabled after installing software updateA Seattle-based law firm has filed the first legal action against Apple after the Guardian revealed how the technology giant has been deliberately “killing” its customers’ iPhone 6s if they have had them repaired by a third party.Law firm PCVA said on Friday that it had brought a class-action lawsuit in the US district court for the northern district of California in response to Apple’s “error 53” iPhone controversy. Continue reading...

Apple Music division’s first TV project to be six-part series titled Vital Signs about rap mogul, whose headphones and streaming service were bought by tech giantApple’s new Apple Music streaming division did not have to look too far for the subject of its first TV project. According the Hollywood Reporter, it is none other than Dr Dre, the music and film producer who made hundreds of millions when the technology giant purchased Beats headphones and streaming service Dre, started with Jimmy Iovine.

Move follows a disastrous week for Facebook during which its free internet service was blocked in India and a board member praised colonialismFacebook India’s managing director Kirthiga Reddy has announced she will be stepping down and moving back to the US after six years in the role.The announcement follows an embarrassing week for the internet firm and its effort to grow its audience in a key developing market of 1.25 billion people. Continue reading...

Teacher wins right to sue over suspension of account after he posted photo of Gustave Courbet’s The Origin of the WorldA court has ruled that Facebook can be sued in France over its decision to remove the account of a French user who posted a photo of a famous 19th-century nude painting.The ruling by the Paris appeal court could set a legal precedent in the country, where Facebook has more than 30 million regular users. Continue reading...

A grieving father’s heartbreaking memorial for his son demonstrates that the genre can be about more than entertainmentVideo games have long enjoyed making entertainment out of conflict, but mainly from the infantilisation and the belittling of what is at its heart. As Simon Parkin explored in his recent book Death by Video Game, gaming barely acknowledges death, despite how central it is to so many titles, let alone lingers on it, or considers the grief in its aftermath.Entertainment is what drives the industry. But it need not define the medium and that it can be more is evident in the recently released That Dragon, Cancer, a title with an uncomfortable subject at its heart. It is a game made by parents Ryan and Amy Green about their son Joel, who was diagnosed with brain cancer at 12 months old. Continue reading...

The media critic on the malfunctioning tech economy, digital detoxes and why Facebook is unhygenicDouglas Rushkoff emerged as a media commentator in 1994 with his first book, Cyberia. His debut examined “the early psychedelic, rave roots of digital technology. I was trying to infer what a digital society might be like given the beliefs of these people,” he tells me during a phone interview from his Brooklyn home.He has published 10 books detailing an increasingly fierce critique of digital society. Along the way Rushkoff has coined terms that have slipped into the lexicon such as “digital natives”, “social currency” and “viral media”. He has also made several documentaries and written novels both graphic and regular; consulted for organisations from the UN to the US government and composed music with Genesis P-Orridge. In 2013 MIT named him the sixth most influential thinker in the world, sandwiched between Steven Pinker and Niall Ferguson. Continue reading...

Our new study on the associations between playing shoot-em-ups at a young age and aggression in adolescence highlights a complex link, surprising no one that actually plays video gamesIt was a headline in the Daily Mail that started it. ‘Computer games leave children with ‘dementia’, warns top neurologist’. It was annoying, because (a) there’s no evidence that games cause dementia in kids, and (b) the top neurologist wasn’t a neurologist. Scaremongering stories about the clear-cut negative effects of video games crop up in the news far too often, but when you start to dig into the evidence behind the claims, the story becomes murky. So rather than simply moan about the problem, Suzi Gage and I, along with some colleagues from the University of Bristol and UCL, decided to do some research for ourselves.A few years later, and the fruits of our labour have just been published in PLOS ONE. Using data from the Children of the 90s study, we set out to answer a (seemingly) simple question: is there an association between playing violent video games at young age, and aggressive behaviour during teenage years? Continue reading...

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will demand Apple explain message that disables handset if it detects repairs by non-Apple techniciansThe competition watchdog says it will ask Apple to urgently explain an error message disabling iPhone users’ handsets and is considering whether it breaches Australian consumer law.Last week the Guardian revealed thousands of iPhone 6 users have received “error 53”, which permanently disables the handset if it detects that a repair has been carried out by a non-Apple technician. Continue reading...

Facebook board member Marc Andreessen’s offensive remarks about India on Twitter hint at an out-of-touch tech eliteAfter an irate Facebook board member wrote that India is better off under colonialism, many in Silicon Valley’s large and influential Indian population were offended.“People like [Facebook board member] Marc Andreessen are speaking from places of such massive privilege and are still so massively wrong,” said Rohit Sharma, a venture capitalist with True Ventures, which has raised $878m. “Someone in India’s needs are just the same as someone in San Francisco. How dare you imply otherwise? No.” Continue reading...

French taxi drivers argue that Uber sidesteps taxes and endangers passengers, while the company claims it is the French system that is behindTwo top Uber executives appeared Thursday in court in charges that could send them to prison, and hand the ride-hailing company one of its most serious legal challenges to date in France.

Only by going back several years can the technology company say that the rate of tax it pays is anything like the rate of UK corporation taxIt was with a straight face that Google’s global head of tax, Tom Hutchinson told MPs on parliament’s public accounts committee that the search group’s worldwide tax rate over the past five years was about 19%.“To me, that appears to be a fair amount of tax to pay,” he said, deadpan. It was a number he and Google’s European boss Matt Brittin kept coming back to in their evidence, on each occasion noting that it was “close to the UK [corporation tax] rate,” currently 20%. Continue reading...

Justin King said traditional retailers paid huge bills for services, while online rivals paid little but received same benefitsThe former boss of Sainsbury’s has waded into the row over the tax paid by multinationals such as Amazon and eBay, saying it was unfair that that traditional retailers must pay huge rates bills for services such as roads and waste collection, while their online rivals paid little but received the same benefits.Business rates, said Justin King, are a bigger problem for British retailers than the corporation tax scandal. Continue reading...

New job postings reveal how the company plans to bring its autonomous cars to market, pointing to a large manufacturing operationAlphabet, the holding company for Google, is pushing forward with plans to spin-out its self-driving car project into a standalone business making and marketing autonomous vehicles, according to new job listings.An advert posted last week for a marketing manager reveals that Alphabet – now the world’s most valuable technology company – intends to bring “self-driving cars to market” and “apply [a] new brand identity” after the project “graduates” from the company’s secretive X division, dedicated to moonshot projects such as airborne power generators and drones providing internet access. Continue reading...

Public accounts committee chair tells internet company’s European boss Matt Brittin people are ‘very angry’ over tax dealGoogle’s executives have been accused of being out of touch with reality after the company’s most senior UK-based executive was unable to tell MPs how much he earned.Matt Brittin appeared before the public accounts committee on Thursday to be questioned alongside senior tax officials about £130m in back taxes that Google agreed to pay in a deal announced last month. Continue reading...

Uber built a following quickly because it was cheap and easy to book - if only its drivers weren’t protesting against their treatmentThere is a distinct but now amusing memory I have from a little over seven years ago of looking through all the apps in the iPhone app store, which was then brand spanking new. It seems unfathomable now, but in late 2008 apps were very far from the mainstream, and lacking the imagination and ubiquity of today. The success and pervasiveness of mobile computing, symbiotically, helped popularise them. And arguably the most successful app of all is Uber — now the most valuable private company in the world worth currently (and imminent verge-of-tech-crash status notwithstanding) $62.5bn.Uber started with an itch that needed to be scratched — that taxi cabs in San Francisco were unreliable and expensive. It built a following because suddenly there was another option that was cheaper, more frequent and easier to book. Uber has its own problems, from a customer point of view; I’ve had Uber rides where the driver got lost and I had to navigate him through the city, and also a ride that cancelled on me after making me wait 45 minutes in the arse end of nowhere. Continue reading...

Court rejected call by producers of Oscar-winning drama to be allowed to unmask 4,726 alleged Australian pirates of the movieAfter a two-year battle, a landmark case against Australian internet users accused of illegally downloading the film Dallas Buyers Club has been dropped by the plaintiff, DBC LLC.The company announced that it had decided not to appeal against a ruling from a federal court in December that rejected a proposal for contact between the film company and alleged downloaders Continue reading...

Updated terms of use ban game engine from use for anything ‘life or safety-critical’ except in advent of reanimated human corpsesIf the world ever ends via a virus that “causes human corpses to reanimate” – a zombie apocalypse by any other name - then Amazon’s got your back, sort of.Amazon’s web services arm has updated its terms of service with a special clause that kicks in in the event of corpses consuming human flesh and the fall of civilisation.

More than 200 million people are already using Windows 10, but will your old software and peripherals still work if you accept this recommended upgrade?I upgraded from Windows 7 to 10 and it looked like everything went fine, even though it changed my home screen saver and where the icons were listed. The one thing I cannot get to work is our HP OfficeJet 7310 All-in-One device, which functions as a printer, copier, scanner, and fax machine. Now the printer function is the only one that works. SteveNew operating systems usually require new drivers, and for full functionality, this usually means drivers provided by the manufacturer. If these aren’t available, Microsoft will install generic drivers. Perhaps that’s what’s happened here, by mistake. Continue reading...