Technology | The Guardian

The social media platform used its friend graph to calculate the degrees separating its 1.6 billion members and found it is as few as 3.57 peopleIt’s a smaller world after all: Facebook has challenged the conventional wisdom that there are six degrees of separation between everyone on the planet.Its number-crunching in commemoration of “Friends day” suggests Kevin Bacon might be as much as 40.5% closer than previously thought. Continue reading...

Games magnate Ian Livingstone’s schools in London and Bournemouth will teach latest in technology and creative thinkingThe founding father of the British games industry, who helped bring Dungeons and Dragons and Lara Croft to the world, is to open two free schools aimed at preparing pupils for the digital world.

Sick children, elderly women and the internet at large have a lot of love for this feline internet celebrity – otherwise known as the ‘Mother Theresa of memes’In which I find myself, at this station in life, sitting in the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel petting something called “Grumpy Cat” while her owner tells me they are here at the Super Bowl because one of the teams has a cat for a mascot…I scratch Grumpy Cat’s head. She sniffs my finger. She licks her nose. And I pray this morning that the geological fault far beneath my feet does not shudder, that the earth does not shake and the Fairmont’s walls will not collapse for that means the final act of my career’s work is to ask an elfin cat with a pouty face if she even knows what a Carolina Panther is. Continue reading...

Filings by Google UK show that £33m of £130m related to share options, which it had argued were exempt from UK taxGeorge Osborne’s claim that the government secured a major corporation tax deal with Google appear to be unravelling after it emerged that a quarter of the £130m recovered by HM Revenue & Customs related to the US company’s share options scheme.Filings by Google’s UK subsidiary show that £33m of the funds paid to the Treasury followed a wrangle over share options handed to staff, which the US business had argued were exempt from UK tax. Continue reading...

Government says Alibaba blocked vast majority of access attempts but regulator’s report leads to company’s US-listed shares falling by 3.7%Hackers in China attempted to access more than 20m active accounts on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s Taobao e-commerce website using Alibaba’s own cloud computing service, according to a state media report posted on the internet regulator’s website.

Huawei’s latest Honor smartphone has an excellent fingerprint scanner, good screen, camera and battery life, but customised Android Lollipop isn’t up to parThe Honor 5X is the latest mid-range smartphone from rising Chinese manufacturer Huawei, which aims to bring decent performance, screen and fingerprint sensor for less than £190.Honor is Huawei’s budget brand and marketed separately, including a couple of smartphones available in the UK with exclusivity to mobile phone operator Three. Continue reading...

Three films and one show to make their debut on 10 February in the US, but fans from elsewhere in the world will have to buy onlineYouTube has confirmed that one TV show and three feature-length films will be the first exclusive content released for its YouTube Red subscription video service.They will debut on 10 February in the US, the only country where YouTube Red has launched so far. Fans elsewhere in the world will have to buy the shows and films from YouTube, or buy and rent them from the Google Play store. Continue reading...

Fan of BBC Radio 4 soap raises more than £10,000 for Refuge in response to powerful storyline of Helen Titchener’s abuseIt is an everyday story of internet folk and this time the tale is particularly heartwarming. An online donations page on behalf of a fictional character in the long-running soap, the Archers has raised more than £10,000 for domestic violence charity Refuge.Archers fan Paul Trueman set up the Helen Titchener (née Archer) Rescue Fund on Tuesday night in response to a powerful storyline in the BBC Radio 4 soap involving the abuse of Helen Titchener by her controlling husband, Rob. Continue reading...

Several US law enforcement agencies use analytics software to identify potential criminals, yet there is little oversight and no proof the data is reliableA police officer stands at the corner of a busy intersection, scanning the crowd with her body camera. The feed is live-streamed into the Real Time Crime Center at department headquarters, where specialized software uses biometric recognition to determine if there are any persons of interests on the street.Data analysts alert the officer that a man with an abnormally high threat score is among the crowd; the officer approaches him to deliver a “custom notification”, warning him that the police will not tolerate criminal behavior. He is now registered in a database of potential offenders. Continue reading...

The alienated workers behind Uber’s app are using other networks to communicate, saying they need the companionshipBill Moore’s walkie-talkie app Zello has mostly been used for people struggling against repressive regimes in places like Egypt, Turkey and Bahrain. In South Africa, communities use it as a 911 system. During anti-government protests in Venezuela, activists turned to Zello.But hasn’t been that popular in the US, Moore said, adding that the US isn’t even in the top market for the app’s 90 million users. Except among one funny group: Uber drivers. Continue reading...

The Mobile Photography Awards is the largest showcase for images taken on smartphones and tablets. Its 2015 competition saw entries from all over the world, including this image from Sydney Continue reading...

Chris Hill-Scott left tech firm in 2008, weeks after startup was set up – now Microsoft has bought it for £174mA civil servant traded in his stake in the keyboard app SwiftKey in 2008 in exchange for a bike, only to see it grow into a £170m success – and to miss out on a payout that could have been worth £25m.Chris Hill-Scott, a 29-year-old from Buckinghamshire, founded the startup bought by Microsoft on Wednesday with Cambridge-graduate friends Jon Reynolds, 30, and Ben Medlock, 26, in 2008. He was appointed director of SwiftKey’s parent company TouchType Ltd on 13 August, according to Companies House, but resigned just months later on 24 October that year. Continue reading...

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

Company reveals just 3.34% of its tech workers are African American – the same proportion as a year ago – but increased number of female employeesIntel has failed to increase its proportion of African American and Hispanic employees despite the computer chip giant making a public pledge last year that it would ensure “full representation” by 2020.The company revealed on Wednesday that just 3.34% of its tech workers are African American – exactly the same proportion as a year ago. The proportion of Hispanic tech workers decreased by 0.08 percentage points to 8.06% from 8.14% this time last year, when Intel’s chief executive Brian Krzanich announced a $300m drive to increase the diversity of its employee base. Continue reading...

Investors could be taking advantage of spikes in Twitter’s stock price – driven by viral rumours on the social media platform that it is about to be acquiredAnother week, another Twitter acquisition rumor – and another spike in the company’s stock.The latest rumor came through the reputable Silicon Valley trade publication the Information, which claimed that Marc Andreessen, billionaire venture capitalist and active tweeter, would be buying Twitter along with the private equity group Silverlake. Twitter’s stock inflated by 6.5%, and then within a few days fell back even lower. Continue reading...

European nation to back research aimed at space race to open first commercial mine of valuable metals off planet EarthLuxembourg has declared its intention to blaze a trail in asteroid mining in the hope that it will reap lucrative returns.The small country’s government said on Wednesday it would invest in space mining companies and establish a legal framework to assure those engaging in the activity that they can keep the fruit of their toils. Continue reading...

Pioneer of artificial intelligence researchMarvin Minsky, who has died aged 88, was a pioneer of artificial intelligence. In 1958 he co-founded the Artificial Intelligence Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Subsequently known as the AI Lab, it became a mecca for artificial intelligence research.His published works included Steps Toward Artificial Intelligence (1960), a manifesto that profoundly shaped AI in its earliest days, and Society of Mind (1985), which postulated that the brain is fundamentally an assembly of interacting, specialised, autonomous agents for tasks such as visual processing and knowledge management. That view of the architecture of the mind remains a cornerstone of AI research. Continue reading...

The collectible card game is trying to balance accessibility for new players with pleasing the hardcore gamersHearthstone, the collectible card game from Blizzard, is about to undergo its biggest shake-up to date, with more than 150 previously released cards being declared illegal in standard games.Cards from the first two expansion packs to be released, July 2014’s Curse of Naxxramas and December 2014’s Goblins vs Gnomes, will no longer be playable in normal games. They will, however, be allowed a new format, called “Wild”. Continue reading...

US spies will have to choose between keeping hackers out or acting like them to gather intelligence, going against recommendation of computer security expertsA reorganization of the National Security Agency could increase pressure on US spies to choose between keeping hackers out – or acting like them to gather intelligence.This week, the NSA is expected to announce an internal reshuffling that will merge its defensive and offensive cybersecurity missions, two former US officials said. Continue reading...

Japanese prime minister condemns ‘serious provocation’ and Washington demands tougher sanctions for defying UN resolutionsThe United States, South Korea and Japan have condemned North Korean plans to launch a rocket carrying a satellite – a further major breach of UN resolutions following a nuclear test in January.The International Maritime Organization said it had received a shipping warning from North Korea of its intention to launch an earth observation satellite between 8 and 25 February.

Such an expansion, which Amazon itself has not confirmed, would position the world’s top online retailer as a competitor to booksellers such as Barnes & NobleAmazon.com is planning to open hundreds of brick-and-mortar bookstores, the head of a major US mall operator said.Such an expansion, which Amazon itself has not confirmed, would position the world’s top online retailer as a competitor to booksellers such as Barnes & Noble. At present, Amazon operates a single bookstore in its home city, Seattle. Continue reading...

Erica Harris and Arte Vann quickly felt a special connection after following each other on Instagram and decided to get married immediately upon meetingIt was love at first “like”.When Arte Vann, of New York, and Erica Harris, of California, connected on Instagram last winter, they clicked immediately. They quickly fell in love while dating long-distance, and finally met face-to-face for the first time on Friday night at the LA Ontario international airport. Continue reading...

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image gets collaborative by opening office doors to Melbourne’s creative community with a 60-seat spaceWhen the Australian Centre for the Moving Image opened its doors in Melbourne 13 years ago, it couldn’t be known how ubiquitous the moving image would become. What does a museum that celebrates the moving image do in an era of smartphones, YouTube and Instagram, when every teenager on Twitter becomes a curator and formerly hard-to-come-by film and sound recordings are now just a few clicks away?For the director and chief executive of Acmi, Katrina Sedgwick, the new state of play means museums – as large cultural institutions, well-funded and well-resourced – must expand to “co-creation”. Continue reading...

Peter Clinkscales, a college student with stickers on his face at Clinton’s sort-of victory party, became a trending topic – though he’s still undecided on his voteMeet Sticker Kid. The true winner of Monday nights caucuses in Iowa.

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

Jack Worth could be forced to pay a fine and has been threatened with charges of misconduct from Emerson College in BostonA Boston college student is in trouble with his school for trying to rent out his dorm room on the accommodation website Airbnb.The student listed his dorm room at Emerson College in downtown Boston on the site in January, according to a petition on the website Change.org tiled “Free Jack Worth”, which is asking the school to drop disciplinary proceedings against him. Continue reading...

Phillip Fleitz, 31, was ‘architect’ of scheme that mined cellphone numbers and bombarbed them with messages that conned users into clicking marketing linksA man who helped send millions of illegal spam messages to US and international cellphones and computers has been sentenced to 27 months in federal prison.Phillip Fleitz, 31, was handcuffed and ordered to immediately begin serving the sentence by a federal judge in Pennsylvania. Continue reading...

The search engine’s parent company performed better than expected Monday with a value of $518bn after investors were given inside look into tech companyAlphabet, parent company of Google, looks set to take the crown from Apple and become the world’s most valuable company.The tech company announced better than expected results on Monday and gave investors their first proper look under the hood at the engine that drives its business. Operating income from its core businesses rose 23% in 2015. Investors liked what they saw and shares spiked 8% in after-hours trading. Continue reading...

Officials debating how European citizens’ data should be shared after safe harbour pact deemed invalid in wake of Snowden revelations

Highly critical report says proposed legislation must be reviewed to ensure obligations on tech industry are clearThe government’s investigatory powers bill lacks clarity and is sowing confusion among tech firms about the extent to which “internet connection records” will be collected, a parliamentary select committee has warned.The highly critical report by the House of Commons science and technology committee says there are widespread doubts about key definitions in the legislation, “not to mention the definability, of a number of the terms”.

From a reworked boardgame to the brilliant GTA, a new crop of games for iOSMaking the most of the relative paucity of major console releases early in the year has traditionally seen a good crop of gaming apps released into a cold, dark January. This year is no exception with colour and light illuminating the gloom from mobiles across a variety of genres – indeed, even the humble boardgame has proved susceptible to a makeover.It’s been done beautifully in Brass (Cubio, iOS, £3.99), which recreates an excellent table-top title set in the north of England during the Industrial Revolution. The idea is to build up cotton mills, coal mines and iron works and connect them through a series of canals and railroads, without going bankrupt. The rules can be daunting so it’s well worth playing on an iPad at first to make reading the text prompts and various cards easier. The tutorial doesn’t do the best job, so hunt around online for a full PDF of the rules. Perseverance does pay off, however, and once you are up and running there is a rewardingly complex challenge to discover, which can be enjoyed both online and offline. With every tiny mistake you make at the start resulting in dire consequences later on, it’s certainly not easy, but failure only increases the desire to learn and improve, making for a compulsive just-one-more-go experience. Continue reading...

When the game-playing system AlphaGo defeated a master of the Chinese game go five games to nil, its creators could not explain why. Is this a sign of intuitive AI?Last week, researchers at the artificial intelligence company DeepMind, which is now owned by Google, announced an extraordinary breakthrough: in October last, a DeepMind computing system called AlphaGo had defeated the reigning European champion player of the ancient Chinese game go by five games to nil. The victory was announced last week in a paper published in the scientific journal Nature.So what? Computers have been getting better and better at board games for yonks. Way back in the dark ages of 1997, for example, IBM’s Deep Blue machine beat the then world chess champion, Garry Kasparov, at chess. So surely go, which is played not with six different pieces but black and white tokens – would be a pushover? Not so: the number of possible positions in go outnumber the number of atoms in the universe and far exceed the number of possibilities in chess. Continue reading...

A new brand from a familiar website, the Orro is a lightweight racer destined to become a classicChris Froome and Philippe Gilbert aren’t sure about them, but Tom Boonen is in favour… When it comes to disc brakes the riders may still be undecided, but as of this summer they will be used in major road events across Europe. Technical and racing fears aside, one thing is clear: the stopping power of discs in the wet is a massive step forward.A good example are those featured on this new model from Orro. The bike is the brainchild of the UK’s largest cycle distributor, i-ride.co.uk, which last year decided to create its own brand from its HQ in Sussex. A whole range of bikes are on offer, including this Pyro Disc. It’s lightweight, pleasingly stable, has impressive handling and comes with a generous level of kit for cash. But you can’t put a price on decent brakes on slippery roads (i-ride.co.uk). Continue reading...

Student engineers win right to build and test concept for high-speed ground transport tubes at new track to be built next to SpaceX headquartersMIT student engineers won a competition to transform SpaceX and Tesla Motors co-founder Elon Musk’s idea into a design for a Hyperloop to move pods of people at high speed.Related: Elon Musk: Tesla cars will be able to cross US with no driver in two years Continue reading...

The US giant’s flat results are in part due to low-cost rivals thriving in the world’s biggest smartphone marketThe idea that one of America’s most talismanic businesses – and the world’s biggest company by market value – might one day come to rely on China for its growth would have seemed strange just a decade ago. But for iPhone maker Apple, what happens on the other side of the world is suddenly crucial to its future.Speaking to analysts last week as the company released its fourth-quarter earnings, chief executive Tim Cook couldn’t assuage concerns. While proclaiming the “best results ever” in greater China, with revenues up 14% to more than $18bn, he also admitted that “we began to see some signs of economic softness [there] earlier this month, most notably in Hong Kong.” The shares, already down from $130 last May to $100, clattered down another few dollars. Continue reading...

As Silicon Valley firms hail the benefits of disruption, some European leaders are pushing to develop the industry’s moral compass. This is a real chance to make better decisions, fight fatalism and build a humane futureFacebook, Google, Amazon and other internet behemoths are involved in a form of technological innovation that is acting as a “wrecking ball”, the president of the European parliament declared in Brussels this week.“The aim is not just to play with the way society is organised, but instead to demolish the existing order and build something new in its place,” said Martin Schulz. “The internet lost its innocence long ago.” Continue reading...

Federal budget proposal seeks billions for grants to states and $100m for competitive grants for school districts over the next three yearsPresident Barack Obama said on Saturday he will ask Congress for billions of dollars to help students learn computer science skills and prepare for jobs in a changing economy.Related: Obama outlines rules for closing gender pay gap and giving women 'fair shot' Continue reading...

CEO Jack Dorsey’s turnaround effort has seen the social networking firm’s shares fall 41% since October. Perhaps it should stop trying to be what it is notTwitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, dug deep at an emergency morale-boosting session at the company’s San Francisco headquarters on Thursday, urging staff to post tweets expressing their commitment to the embattled social networking firm.Related: Twitter's US users fall by a third in two years - report Continue reading...

Amazon leads the way into the real world as online real estate – once heralded as the next frontier for retail – becomes crowded and expensiveRemember when the future of retail was online? Now it seems that online retailers have decided they can’t get by without bricks and mortar.Amazon raised eyebrows in November when it opened its first brick and mortar extension – a bookstore in Seattle’s University Village. The online giant’s rise, after all, is blamed for laying waste to independent bookshops across the country.

Screens all around Golden Jubilee hospital in Clydebank reveal ‘brutally transparent’ stats on everything from hand hygiene to superbug ratesThe dials on the dashboard screen flicker between red and green, to indicate targets missed or met, outside the orthopaedic ward of the Golden Jubilee national hospital in Clydebank.The information displayed here is free of medical jargon and simple to understand, led by what relatives themselves said they wanted to know about the place where their loved ones were being cared for. And it is also brutally transparent – a single patient fall or pressure sore is a missed target, making angry red blots appear at the bottom of the screen. There has been one of each in this particular ward over the past month. Continue reading...

Tory peer Nigel Lawson says ability for multinationals to move profits around world makes corporation tax redundant

Like many people I was incensed and embarrassed at the absurdly low tax settlement with Google (EU’s warning over Google tax deal row, 29 January). Yet another huge US corporation ducking and weaving to obtain spectacularly favourable concessions in rich European consumer bases. It pays armies of lawyers and accountants to flex their muscles on our hapless government departments with less able negotiators. I don’t just blame Mr Osborne. His team has proved to be a spineless disgrace in negotiations, worn down by relentless pressure from these huge corporations.Related: EU could force Google to pay more UK tax Continue reading...

Their films use the high-production standards seen in gaming and action movies in their quest to appeal and appal. But they’re not the only ones who have had that ideaRelated: Media jihad: why Isis's leaders bow to its propagandistsA recent, wearyingly grim clip from Islamic State shows six armed children sweeping a castle in search of bound hostages. One by one, they enter the ruin, their movement tracked by multiple cameras. When, at last, each boy finds a target, cringing in the shadows, he lines up a shot and, following a theatrical pause, squeezes the trigger. The footage invites many questions. Who are these children? Who are the men they kill? What perverted doctrine could ever defend such cruelty? How large was the production team? Continue reading...

Pilots call for action and warn the four category-A incidents at Heathrow, Stansted, City airport and Manchester are just the tip of the icebergAirline pilots have called for a clampdown on drones, warning of potential disaster after four separate near-miss incidents at UK airports were reported in a single month, including one in a passenger jet taking off from London Stansted.The pilots have called for urgent action after the four “category A” incidents in which a serious risk of a collision occurred. Continue reading...

Developed from surplus military parts in 1947 by designer Maurice Wilks on his Anglesey farm, Land Rover’s Defender has become a design classic and a royal favourite. It has covered the globe in a variety of guises, with most still running thanks to its durability and simplicity. The vehicle, which has been built at the Solihull plant since 1948, will cease production on Friday

Licensed Taxi Drivers Association weighs up court action claiming app’s licence should be reviewed over its corporation tax paymentsLondon’s black-cab drivers are considering court action to try to revoke Uber’s licence to operate in the city, citing the fact that the ride-hailing app firm pays no corporation tax in the UK.It emerged last October that Uber paid just £22,134 in UK corporation tax in the most recent financial year despite making an £866,000 profit. The tax paid related to amounts deferred from previous years when Uber’s UK operation made a loss. Continue reading...

Having gone from humble black-and-white beginnings, 2016 will see TV set free from the television set to be consumed wherever and whenever you wantSince its first demonstration in the mid-1920s television has gone through five major shifts that affect the way viewers consume it. Now we’re on the verge of a sixth shift that will bring it kicking and screaming into a brave new world of TV everywhere.The UK is the most advanced TV-watching country in the world, according to Ofcom, and has seen a record rise in the use of tablets for consuming media. The living room TV is no-longer the be-all and end-all of television consumption. Continue reading...

The social network’s 1.5bn users will soon be able to respond to posts with ‘love’, ‘haha’, ‘wow’, ‘sad’ and ‘angry’ buttonsFacebook is to expand its “like” feature with five new emoji options called Reactions. The social network’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said the buttons would be pushed out to the site’s 1.5 billion users “pretty soon”.The “love”, “haha”, “wow”, “sad” and “angry” buttons are being tested in several countries, Zuckerberg said. Each one has an emoji-style face and will appear underneath users’ posts. Continue reading...

Renting a luxury house near Levi’s Stadium can exceed the country’s median per capita income, and some are hoping to spin their homes into Super Bowl goldOne million people are expected to travel to the San Francisco Bay area for Super Bowl 50, and some residents are hoping to spin their homes into gold.The going price for renting out a luxury house near where the champion football game will be played can exceed the country’s median per capita income of $28,155. The promise of that kind of payday is prompting some homeowners to test the waters of short-term rental platforms like Airbnb for the first time. Continue reading...

Shares in the online retailer dropped 12% after announcing a net profit of $482m in last months of 2015, a gain that was less than analysts had been expectingAmazon recorded it largest ever quarterly profit over the holiday quarter but missed Wall Street’s estimates by a wide margin, sending its share price into a tailspin.Shares in the world’s largest online retailer plunged 12% on Thursday after it announced a net profit of $482m for the three months ending 31 December – up from $214m a year earlier. The company notched up $35.75bn in sales in last year’s final three months. Continue reading...