Technology | The Guardian

Latest Internet Advertising Bureau figures show 22% of web users over 18 years old use software to strip ads from digital contentMore than 9 million British web users say they now block ads, more than a fifth of all those over 18 years old who use the internet.The Internet Advertising Bureau’s latest snapshot of adblocking shows that 22% of British web users over 18 years old are currently using software to strip ads from digital content, up from the 18% who said they did so in October.

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

Judge James Orenstein says government’s position has implications that are ‘so far reaching as to produce impermissibly absurd results’A federal judge on Monday rejected an FBI request to order Apple to open the iPhone of a drug dealer in a major setback to the US government’s increasingly heated efforts to force the company to help unlock an iPhone used by a San Bernardino terrorist.The ruling late on Monday by magistrate judge James Orenstein rejected the US Justice Department’s attempt to gain access to the iPhone of accused crystal meth dealer Jun Feng, whose case is ongoing, though Feng has pleaded guilty. He will be sentenced in April. Continue reading...

Tech industry titans and political heavyweights have all weighed in to the debate over whether Apple should help the FBI access a terrorist’s iPhoneThe debate between Apple and the US Department of Justice had made for very strange bedfellows.Democratic congressman Mike Honda of California has come down firmly on the side of the tech company, saying that the DoJ sought to increase its authority “with the tyrannical impulses that were the very reason our country was created”. Continue reading...

It has taken two years, but there is finally an agreement over how US companies, including Google and Facebook, will transfer their users’ data out of EuropeEurope sought to plug a gap in a new transatlantic data pact on Monday by urging US firms to allow European Union privacy regulators to police compliance with the new rules.

Total Beauty promises to donate $10,000 to charity after admitting there were ‘no excuses’ for its Twitter errorA beauty website has apologised after mistaking Whoopi Goldberg for Oprah Winfrey as part of its Oscars night coverage.Total Beauty was criticised on social media after tweeting a photograph of Goldberg, who has a distinctive tattoo on her shoulder, accompanied by the line: “We had no idea Oprah was #tatted, and we love it.” Continue reading...

Raspberry Pi foundation launches new model as it announces 8m devices have been sold in four years, making it the UK’s all-time bestselling computerThe Raspberry Pi foundation has launched the latest generation of its flagship credit card-sized computer as it announced sales have topped 8m, making it the UK’s all-time bestselling computer.The Raspberry Pi 3, released on Monday, costs $35 (£25), the same as its predecessor (although still seven times more than the ultra-stripped-down Raspberry Pi Zero, which was launched as a free cover gift with a magazine). In its small-form factor is a 1.2GHz quad-core ARM processor (a boost from the Pi 2’s 900MHz), as well as integrated Wi-Fi and bluetooth, a first for the series. Continue reading...

My father, Roger Stanier, who has died aged 91, was an electrical engineer for the Post Office, a passionate gardener and an immensely knowledgeable railway enthusiast.He was born in Birmingham, the youngest child of Bill, a silversmith, and Mabel (nee Read), who had been a pupil-teacher, staying on after the usual leaving age to work with younger pupils, in Essex. Roger was educated at King Edward VI Camp Hill school for boys in Birmingham – but he was one of the generation of bright working-class students who went to grammar school with no prospect of going on to university. His career choice, in fact, was decreed by his parents. His brother, John, had already started to work for the Post Office’s telephone operation, and Roger started work there as an apprentice electrical engineer. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterMonday! Continue reading...

Britain’s new daily has no leading articles, no website, and columnists but no columns: can it drag readers back to print?

The new Street Fighter punches harder than ever, Dying Light delivers on its promises and Lego goes to pieces in its devotion to Marvel(PS4, PC, Capcom, cert: 12) Continue reading...

The group had hoped to host a party at the house south of Paris but their plans were derailed by the macabre discoveryA group of friends who rented a house on Airbnb for a party weekend in a French town got a nasty surprise when they discovered the decomposing body of a woman in the garden.

One Direction star ‘confirms’ reports of alleged relationship with X Factor judge by posting picture of them together

What might happens at this week’s congressional hearing as the iPhone maker continues to defy last month’s court order over phone encryption?On Tuesday, Apple will face one of the biggest corporate challenges in its history, when it tells a US House of Representatives committee why it has refused to help law enforcement officers break into the iPhone of Syed Farook – one of the gunmen in the San Bernardino shooting in December that left 14 dead and 22 wounded. The technology giant will be represented by its top lawyer, Bruce Sewell; making the case against it will be FBI boss James Comey.Apple, the world’s most valuable private company, has come under fire from many in politics and law enforcement after refusing to comply with the 16 February court order. Continue reading...

The rapper says he will name his next album after the games console launched in Japan in 1987. This is a good ideaSay what you like about Kanye West, but he sure knows his classic games consoles.The normally shy and retiring rapper has tweeted that his next album will be called TurboGrafx-16: an announcement that may have left some of his younger fans staring blankly at their phone screens in confusion. Continue reading...

Chinese internet billionaire Jia Yueting has an impressive track record, yet his ambitious electric car plans are riddled with problems and financial questions

Speaking in Berlin, Facebook boss calls Germany’s handling of European refugee crisis ‘inspiring’ and says site must do more to tackle anti-migrant hate speechMark Zuckerberg conceded Friday that Facebook didn’t do enough until recently to police hate speech on the social media site in Germany, but said that it has made progress and has heard the message “loud and clear”.German authorities, concerned about racist abuse being posted on Facebook and other social networks as the country deals with an influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants, have been pressing social media sites for months to crack down. Continue reading...

Two brothers whose sentences had been suspended are jailed for two years after obscene ‘jeering’ online at judge’s leniencyTwo brothers summoned back to court for mocking a judge on Facebook after she decided not to send them to prison for dealing drugs have been jailed for two years.

Lila Tretikov, the executive director of the organisation that oversees Wikipedia, has quit after a community revoltThe executive director of the Wikimedia foundation, the body that manages the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, has resigned following a row within the community over leaked plans to apparently build a search engine and compete with Google.Lila Tretikov, who joined the organisation in May 2014, offered her resignation to the board this week, and will work out her term until the end of March, according to Patricio Lorente, a member of the Wikimedia’s board of trustees. Continue reading...

From long-sighted FaceTime calls to urban rock-paper-scissors battles, even the perfectionism machine can be improved at arm’s length“I think if you’re looking at a PC, why would you buy a PC anymore? No really, why would you buy one?” said Apple chief executive Tim Cook in January.

Writer of the After series promises that she’ll involve her readers in future books, while answering their questions in new mobile communityAnna Todd started out writing fan fiction about One Direction on story-sharing community Wattpad, with a billion reads fuelling its transition into the After series of books.Now Todd is finding a new mobile way to chat to her own fans and encourage them to write their own stories, with the launch of an official app. Continue reading...

Signal’s security engineer Frederic Jacobs will join Apple as an intern this summer, to work on its CoreOS securityApple has hired a lead developer of encrypted messaging app Signal to work on its security team.Frederic Jacobs, who worked on Signal as a security engineer for two-and-a half years, will be joining Apple in an internship position for this summer, where he says he will be working “with the CoreOS security team”. Continue reading...

Set in the Stone Age, this game is nothing like the previous instalments of the franchise, lacking modern weaponry and an arch-villain

Openreach should be run at ‘arm’s length’, regulator says in review, but BT should keep control of cable network – for nowBT has been told to help rivals use its infrastructure to lay fibre cables that are faster than its own copper network, as part of a review of Britain’s broadband needs by the regulator Ofcom.In a once in a decade review, the regulator stopped short of recommending that BT be forced to split off Openreach, the division that owns the broadband infrastructure. Continue reading...

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

The first of a 16-part series called Unbound, with music from Blackstar and starring Tavi Gevinson and Patricia Clarkson, has been posted to InstagramRelated: David Bowie's Blackstar to be turned into Instagram miniseriesThe first vignette from Instagram’s new miniseries Unbound, featuring music from David Bowie’s final album Blackstar, is as enigmatic as you’d expect from such a project. Before his death the British singer provided film-makers with unmediated access to the music and images from the album, with “no limits or preconditions”.

The company is investigating why staff are still ‘maliciously’ writing ‘all lives matter’ on campus walls, despite pleas from Zuckerberg himselfFacebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reprimanded employees following several incidents in which the slogan “black lives matter” was crossed out and replaced with “all lives matter” on the walls of the company’s Menlo Park headquarters.“‘Black lives matter’ doesn’t mean other lives don’t – it’s simply asking that the black community also achieves the justice they deserve,” Zuckerberg wrote in an internal Facebook post obtained by Gizmodo.

FBI’s ‘unprecedented’ request violates free speech law, Apple argues in first legal response to order that it must provide access to San Bernardino shooter’s phoneApple’s lawyers believe forcing America’s largest company to help the government crack open one of its iPhones would violate the US constitution and be a misinterpretation of a 227-year-old law. Continue reading...

Lawmakers will have first chance to question an Apple representative about the company’s escalating battle with the FBI over unlocking San Bernardino iPhoneApple’s top lawyer will testify before a congressional panel next week about the company’s escalating battle with the FBI over smartphone privacy, Washington sources have confirmed.Related: Inside the FBI's encryption battle with Apple Continue reading...

Andy Burnham says Conservative claims to have presided over a fall in crime while cutting police budgets would be proved falseCrime figures for England and Wales will double once cyber offences are included in official statistics, the shadow home secretary has said, launching Labour’s police and crime commissioner campaign ahead of May’s elections.Speaking at a launch event alongside Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in Birmingham, Andy Burnham said that Conservative claims to have presided over a fall in crime while cutting police budgets would be proved false once cyber crime was routinely included in Office for National Statistics crime figures from July.

Publishers with more than 10m blocked ads have to pay 30% of the revenue from previously blocked ads to make it on to whitelistAdblock Plus creator Eyeo has revealed crucial details behind the operation of the company’s controversial “acceptable ads” programme, which allows some advertisements through its adblocking software, often in exchange for a cut of the revenue received from the ads.In a blogpost, the company explained how it decides which publishers are asked to pay a fee to let their adverts through, and gave a partial explanation as to how that fee is calculated. Adblock Plus is the most popular desktop adblocking software, and its database is also used for many popular mobile adblocking apps (such as the iOS and Android app Crystal), which also integrate the acceptable ads program. Continue reading...

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, the Apple CEO defended his company’s decision to resist the FBI’s demand for help cracking an encrypted iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Cook said Apple would do everything it could to protect the the US against terrorism, but not at the cost of the privacy of millions of people Continue reading...

Jason Mander assesses iPhone fatigue and slowing growth in the face of stiff competition from SamsungAs Samsung celebrates its first registered profit in years during the third quarter of 2015 and shows off new devices along with LG and others at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), Apple is having a nervous start to the new year. Yes, it posted record quarterly revenues of $75.9bn and record quarterly profits of $18.4bn, but glance behind the titanium curtain at Apple and a core problem is materialising.That problem is the iPhone, a device that still accounts for around two-thirds of Apple’s revenue. With smartphone penetration slowing considerably in western markets and an economic softness in China sparking concern that Apple will no longer see the profits and prospects of old, speculation has been rife that the firm will try and combat global economic pressure by launching a cheap device with a smaller screen before unveiling the iPhone 7. Continue reading...

Release your inner Ranieri with these strategy sims that get you handling tactics, transfers and training from your smartphone or tabletIf you think Guardiola, Wenger and Ranieri are the cream of the football-management crop, you should have seen me take Bishop’s Stortford from non-league obscurity to Champions League glory in less than a decade.Admittedly, this was in the last version of Football Manager on my computer, but my translatable skills for real-world management are surely clear. Old Trafford, I’m waiting for your call … Continue reading...

More than 33 million people in the UK are expected to log in regularly to the social network this year, with more than half of mobile users accessing the site

Sharon has upgraded to Windows 10 and now she can’t play DVDs. What’s the solution?What do I need to do to watch a DVD in Windows 10? It was disabled when I upgraded from Windows 7. Sharon

Anyone who takes intimate images without consent, or shares them or publishes them online, could be prosecuted if the recommendations are adoptedA Senate committee recommends the government criminalise the unauthorised sharing of intimate photos, an increasingly common practice known as revenge porn.Anyone who takes intimate images without consent, and anyone who shares them or publishes them online, could be prosecuted if the report’s recommendations are adopted. Continue reading...

Laptop first, tablet second, this is the best combination of a 2-in-1 machine with all the power of a full PC squeezed into 7.7mm of tabletThe Surface Book is the first of a new line of laptops from Microsoft with a twist, the screen comes off.

The Brit awards were, as ever, a mishmash of style hits and misses – for every Vivienne Westwood dress there was a James Bay hat

Finance ministry source says France is demanding money from the US internet giant, which has come under scrutiny for alleged tax avoidance practicesFrance is seeking €1.6bn ($1.76bn) in back taxes from US internet giant Google, criticised for its use of aggressive tax optimisation techniques, a source at the finance ministry says.“As far as our country is concerned, back taxes concerning this company amount to €1.6bn,” the official, who declined to be named, said on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Marc Zwillinger used to be a prosecutor for the DoJ – but now he is a go-to tech lawyer for Silicon Valley companies fighting against government surveillanceRelated: Apple v the FBI: what's the beef, how did we get here and what's at stake?In a previous incarnation, Marc Zwillinger – the man behind Apple’s legal strategy for taking on the US government – used to order up wiretaps for the Department of Justice. Continue reading...

Boston Dynamics tests its newest version of its Atlas robot design. The latest generation is smaller than its predecessor, and able to run without wires entirely. The footage shows the robot enduring ‘robot torture’, being prodded with a hockey stick before eventually being forcefully shoved over entirely with a tube. But when it’s down, Atlas isn’t out, and the robot manages to quickly get up on two legs

‘Escape the room’ events are cropping up in cities all over the world, offering players their own Crystal Maze experience. What could be more romantic?“Planning a date?” tweeted my friend and game designer Mink Ette in January. “What better way to find out if you’re soul mates than being trapped in a room for 60 minutes under extreme pressure?”Mink was workshopping marketing lines for her and co-creator David Aldhouse’s new live-action room-escape game Enter the Oubliette, a dystopian-themed puzzle-solving group experience, based in a converted office building in Brixton. But to me, this sounded like an efficient way to mix business and pleasure. I needed a venue for a looming first date, I knew the guy played video games, and I figured that, whatever happens, I may at least get an article out of it. Clearly, I’m a born romantic. Continue reading...

Defendants stand accused of leaking contact information of 541 police officers, along with hacking and blocking government websites in 2012Three French members of the hacking collective Anonymous have gone on trial for accessing a police union website, collecting contact information for hundreds of police officers and disclosing the details online in 2012.A prosecutor asked a Paris court to hand the three men, aged 22 to 27, a one-year suspended sentence and a 5,000 euro fine each, a lawyer for the police officers, Daniel Merchat, told Associated Press. Continue reading...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Tuesday he is sympathetic towards Apple in their fight with the FBI. Zuckerberg made his comments during a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Zuckerberg acknowledged the importance of working with government agencies to protect the country against terrorism threats, but said a ‘back door’ into encryption technologies was not the way Continue reading...

Publisher of Sports Illustrated and People could opt for tax-free deal that would not include CEO Marissa Mayer, according to reportTime Inc, the publisher of Sports Illustrated, People and Time magazine, is considering a deal to buy the core business of Yahoo Inc, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.Time has heard a presentation from Citigroup bankers on pursuing a deal with Yahoo, the Bloomberg report said, adding that Citigroup had not been retained by Time. Continue reading...

Smartphone manufacturer’s latest quick-charge technology promises safe, fast and low-temperature charging of full-size smartphone batteriesChinese smartphone manufacturer Oppo has announced that its latest technology, due to hit handsets this year, will fully charge a phone in 15 minutes.

In a battle with the FBI over demand that Apple help unlock an iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter, government insists Apple has cooperated in the pastApple’s history of working with law enforcement agencies has never included a demand for the kind of access the Department of Justice (DoJ) is seeking now, according to a person familiar with the company’s actions and a review by the Guardian.The company is in a very public battle with the FBI over its demand that Apple help it unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino attack last year.

One day all human interaction will go through the social network – until then, here’s another way to spam your loved ones with greetings