Technology | The Guardian

A new version of the classic1988 games console is selling well this year, apparently, but the appeal of this system goes deeper than reminiscenceEvery year at about this time, newspapers love to identify the biggest-selling Christmas presents – those sudden surprise hits that have desperate shoppers combing internet stores for hours or simply fighting each other in Toys R Us.This year, among other candidates, is a £40 wireless version of the Sega Mega Drive, the classic 1988 games console, famous for Sonic the Hedgehog. According to Argos, sales of the retro gadget, which includes 80 built-in games (although only 40 are Mega Drive classics, the rest are generic mini-games like solitaire) and a cartridge port so you can use any original game carts you have lying around, have risen by 400% this month. While we’re all supposed to be saving up for cutting-edge machines like the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, some families will be gathered around a very different audio-visual experience come 25 December. Continue reading...

From Microsoft’s first true attempt at a graphical interface in Windows 1 to Windows 10’s unifying of platforms across multiple devices

150 software developers, designers and entrepreneurs will pay £25 each to spend weekend inventing apps to improve UK rail networkWith its £38.5bn five-year plan to upgrade the railways yet to bring the desired results, the cash-strapped Department for Transport is turning to the tech world to spark some creative fixes and launching a 48-hour hackathon to improve Britain’s trains.An estimated 150 software developers, designers and entrepreneurs from across the world will board trains from London to York on Friday and attempt to find new ways to make the railway more efficient.

Coolest starts selling its fancy beer cooler on Amazon to ‘keep the lights on’, while Zano just goes bust

Kids are generating billions of video views on the online video service, but it’s raising some talking points for parentsFrom Minecraft builds to YouTube videos – not to mention YouTube videos of Minecraft builds – children in 2015 have plenty of options for digital entertainment.YouTube, in particular, has emerged as an alternative to traditional children’s TV – although it’s probably more accurate to say that the two are merging: plenty of popular children’s TV shows are now on YouTube in some form, while to young viewers – many on tablets – it’s all just “video”. Continue reading...

Hoverboards are prohibited by state law since they are motor vehicles that can’t be registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles, NYPD spokesman saysSorry, Marty McFly – not in New York. The Big Apple is banning “hoverboards” from its streets, the New York City police department has confirmed.The ban on the futuristic-looking self-balancing scooters follows a similar one in London and follows concerns that their growing popularity is causing problems on the city’s streets and sidewalks. Continue reading...

Tinder CEO’s embarrassing mistake won’t go away – it’s now immortalised in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange CommissionWhen Tinder chief executive Sean Rad gave an interview in which he confused the word “sodomy” with the word “sapiosexual” (a term for only being attracted to intelligent people), he probably thought that was the worst thing that would come out of speaking to the Evening Standard newspaper.Unfortunately, Rad was speaking immediately before Tinder’s parent company Match.com went public, launching on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York. And in the runup to an initial public offering, a US company is bound by strict requirements over what information they can communicate to the public. Continue reading...

Social network says 150 million of its users are connected to a cause, so it is setting out to help charities raise moneyFacebook is testing new tools to help charities raise money within the social network, with 37 partners already signed up.Restricted to the US for now, the early testers include the World Wildlife Fund and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, with Facebook planning to open up the test to more non-profit bodies in the coming months. Continue reading...

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

The mobile payment company has failed to impress investors ahead of a share sale that is a crucial test for Silicon Valley’s “unicorns”Mobile payment company Square slashed its share price on Wednesday night ahead of a sale that is casting a shadow over the new darlings of the tech sector.The small-business-centric digital payments firm, which makes portable credit card scanners that work with smartphones, is run by Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey. It is one of a number of so-called “unicorns” - start-up companies valued at billions of dollars that have yet to make a profit. Continue reading...

Tinder’s CEO is exactly what you’d expect Tinder’s CEO to be like – ‘addicted’ to his own serviceLondon’s Evening Standard has published an interview with Tinder’s chief executive, Sean Rad, in which Rad apparently plays the part of the living embodiment of his service.The co-founder and CEO, who is “addicted” to his own service (“every other week I fall in love with a new girl”), has a confession to make: a supermodel has, he says, been “begging” him on the app for sex. But he’s said no every time. Continue reading...

Some users may receive a letter asking them to pay a fine for copyright infringement, the company statesA number of Sky broadband customers have been warned that they may be targeted by demands that they pay a fine for illegally downloading pornographic movies.The broadband firm has sent letters to customers after it was forced to hand over their personal data by a court order to rights company Golden Eye, which owns the copyright to multiple adult movies. Continue reading...

A biopic of the game’s Russian inventor Alexey Pajitnov is in development in the vein of The Social NetworkA drama about the inventor of Tetris is in development from director/producer Brett Ratner.Related: Monopoly 'origins movie' to explore game's anti-corporate inception Continue reading...

Privacy advocates call renewed discussion cynical and say government ‘back door’ access to secure communications would doubtless be used by terroristsAs the world continues to absorb the full impact of the murders of civilians by Islamic State attackers in Paris, officials on both sides of the Atlantic have renewed a discussion that many thought had been closed: whether or not to allow government agencies “back-door” access to the codes used to secure communications and financial and personal medical information.US and European officials have been quick to indict technology for the attacks – although they have yet to show how, or if, technology contributed. CIA director John Brennan, whose own personal email account was recently breached by hackers, attributed the recent popularity of secure communications to “a lot of handwringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists”, and said the effect had been to make the CIA’s ability to locate people “much more challenging”.

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

Isis Anchalee, a San Francisco-based engineer, claims to have had her Facebook account disabled because of her nameFacebook is joining the fight against terrorism – one woman named Isis at a time.Isis Anchalee, an engineer based in San Francisco, complained on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon that her Facebook account had been disabled, and suggested it was because of her name. Continue reading...

Adverts attracted 26 complaints for saying BT Sport was ‘free’ for existing customers when they in fact needed to renew a contract

The ‘face with tears of joy’ symbol has been named the word of the year. How did a Japanese teen gimmick end up changing the way we communicate? Plus, a crash course in how to use the aubergine, side eye and sinkhole

This week at the UK box office, national treasures Smith and Alan Bennett appeal to audiences in a way Steve Jobs can’t match. But Bond beats them allIt was English national treasures (Maggie Smith, Alan Bennett) v American brainiacs (Aaron Sorkin, Steve Jobs) at the UK box office this week, with the former scoring a convincing victory. The Lady in the Van opened with a very healthy £2.26m, as against £913,000 for Steve Jobs. Continue reading...

After the Paris attacks, the hacktivists have declared war on Isis. Will their tactics work?Anonymous is one of the fightiest groups on the internet. The loose collective of hacktivists, born from the notorious 4chan forum, has declared war on nearly every hate figure imaginable, from Scientology in 2008 to, most recently, Islamic State. Here are some of its most notorious clashes. Continue reading...

It took Cory Doctorow 30 days to unsubscribe from 3,000 ‘legitimate’ email lists – the kind of marketing that threatens to overload this critical, federated platformNevada’s Black Rock desert is not a hospitable place when you need to check your email. At the Burning Man festival in September, I was trying to get online between dust storms, travelling between camps on the vast playa in the desert, searching for a functional antenna and trying to find enough shade to see my phone screen. Festival life was literally passing me by, on decorated bicycles, cars turned into moving art, on stilts, or just staggering by.But when I finally found a thin Wi-Fi signal to download mail, most of what I was downloading was spam. I spent several frustrating hours looking for enough internet to get just the headers for my mail, but even reading nothing but headers, the spam outstripped my connectivity. I wouldn’t have bothered checking email from a desert, but was in the middle of an intercontinental move, a bunch of time-sensitive political campaigns with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the negotiation for the sale of my next novel, and an intense discussion with my business partners at Boing Boing. In the end, I missed some pretty important stuff. Continue reading...

The definition of a ‘worker’ is being redefined by the US tech industry, resisting the Democrats’ more traditional ties with labor unionsIn America’s new era of political realignment, the Republican party is not the only one experiencing a grassroots political coup. A new breed of capitalism-loving and urbanized liberals are demanding an entirely new role for the federal government.

#OpIsis, born in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo murders, stepped up following Paris attacksThe online collective Anonymous “is at war” with the Islamic State following the attacks in Paris, in a continuation of its “#OpISIS” campaign.One major Anonymous twitter account, @GroupAnon, announced the operation on 15 November, writing that “we won’t stop opposing #IslamicState. We’re also better hackers.” Continue reading...

Every few decades since the 1950s, there is another automation scare (Letters, 10 November). Yet each new wave of automation displaces less labour than predicted. I investigated the last of these predictions in the 1990s about the imminent computer integrated factory (Forcing the Factory of the Future, 1997). By and large it didn’t happen. However sophisticated the systems, workers are still needed to fill in the unexpected and non-standard tasks. Investments are costly and labour is always cheaper somewhere in the world: today in east Asia and eastern Europe. As in previous episodes it is usually those who would gain from the hype being taken seriously, eg banks (for the capital borrowing) and consultancies (for the expensive advice), who are in the vanguard of propagating it.

Four years after discontinuing Zune devices meant to compete with Apple’s iPods, the tech company announced it would shift focus to Groove music playerAlas, poor Zune: Microsoft’s long-doomed answer to the iPod has finally given up the ghost, according to a quiet and brief eulogy posted on Microsoft’s support pages on Sunday. While the company will still allow the remaining Zune-enabled devices to function, it won’t be possible to stream or download music to them anymore.

Social network activates feature previously used during natural disasters, while other apps and tools help those caught in aftermath of terrorist attacksFacebook activated its Safety Check service for a terrorist incident for the first time during the Paris attacks, allowing people to notify their loved ones that they were safe.

Video games don’t have to be about death and warfare. Emotional, intimate and sexually frank, Nina Freeman’s relationship-led adventures are revolutionising the genreThe couple are entwined on a small bed in a dormitory room in New York City. Young and inexperienced, they fumble at each other’s clothes, his hands all over her. The camera draws in nearer, almost uncomfortably stark and intimate in the way of all mumblecore movies about the awkward first stages of a new relationship. But this is not an independent film. This is a video game, and the woman on the bed is played by its designer, Nina Freeman. It’s a long way from Call of Duty.Related: Video games to get you through Valentine's Day Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterOh, it’s Monday, how delightful.Today’s screenshot is from Z-Exemplar, a scrolling shooter designed to look like a ZX Spectrum conversion of R-Type. It’s by Scottish studio Suminell and it’s currently in Steam Greenlight. Continue reading...

Built for posties and now refurbed by a charity for people in Malawi, the Elephant bike is the ultimate feelgood bicycleRemember when postmen used to wobble down the road on those bright red delivery bicycles? Many of those bikes have been scrapped, but the Krizevac Project, a small charity in Staffordshire, has been slowly collecting these sturdy three-geared machines, renovating them and shipping them to Malawi. Over the past six years they’ve stockpiled 20,000 and so far managed to send 7,000 to Africa. British prisoners now help with the repairs, allowing inmates to gain their Cytech qualification, too. To help raise funds to refurb the rest of the frames, Krizevac has set up a ‘buy one give one’ initiative called Elephant. For £250 you get a brilliant workhorse of a bike, with a great backstory and the knowledge that a second bike will be heading to Malawi to change a life (elephantbike.co.uk).Price: £250 (rrp £645)

A look at the tinkerers, designers and big thinkers pushing the boundaries of transportationNew Zealand-based Martin Aircraft Company’s flagship product is an unconventional flying machine: a jetpack that might seem like a prop from a sci-fi movie, were it not for the fact that it’s well on the road to commercialization.

As part of our series on the future of transportation, we’re looking at a few vehicles that might change the way you travel. XTI Aircraft has developed a concept for a six-seat business jet that flies like a normal passenger jet, but with a twist – it also takes off and lands vertically. The TriFan 600 jet uses three ducted fans for the vertical liftoff. Seconds after takeoff, two wing fans rotate forward to shift to horizontal flight. A fan mounted to the fuselage closes. When it comes time to land, the process plays out in reverse. XTI provided the Guardian with this product rendering.

As part of our series on the future of transportation, we’re looking at vehicles that might change the way you travel. Industrial designer Tommaso Gecchelin has sketched out a modular concept he’s calling Next, which features electric pods that can connect and disconnect to other pods as needed, like some futuristic train that can start small and then expand, accordion-style. Gecchelin provided the Guardian with this product rendering.

As part of our series on the future of transportation, we’re looking at a few vehicles that might change the way you travel. XCOR Aerospace is engineering rockets aimed at taking passengers and payloads on trips shorter than an hour that soar up to 330,000 feet. The company plans to run test flights next year and launch commercial service within 12 months. XCOR provided the Guardian with this promotional video rendering.

As nationalism sweeps Europe, a subtle cinematic triumph about an unlikely subject animates the hopes of transnational democracyDavid Bernet hates carpets. Particularly sturdy, institutional carpets; “the ugly kind that last forever”. But in his latest film, Democracy, the 49-year-old Swiss film-maker has spent five years treading the carpets of Brussels. He’s been following a process with an uncertain ending, in an aesthetic he finds displeasing, to direct a wholly original film about the machinations of European law-making.Democracy, opening this week in Germany, is a determinedly European film. It is also a subtle, human, optimistic, sensual portrayal of something that for most people couldn’t be further from those descriptors: data-protection reform. Continue reading...

Nintendo fans have some exciting things in the pipeline for the coming year. Meet Linkle, Star Fox and … Cloud Strife?Nintendo fans were treated to their seasonal helping of hype on Thursday night as the company took to the net to broadcast its pre-Christmas edition of Nintendo Direct, its straight-to-the-fans presentation where it shows off what’s in the pipeline for the coming year.And good news if you have a 3DS or WiiU: some of what is in the pipeline looks fairly exciting. Here are the five most interesting announcements to come from last night’s presentation. Continue reading...

The Buena Vista mobile home park in Palo Alto is a close-knit community. But can they resist the march of developers who want to build flats for tech workers?“It’s not a big mansion,” Amanda Serrano says of her ageing off-white trailer in plot 59 of the Buena Vista mobile home park in Silicon Valley. “But I feel happy here. It’s my own trailer.”Serrano, a 48-year-old care assistant, says the park in Palo Alto is the first place she’s lived where she feels comfortable living openly as a transgender woman, in a relationship with her boyfriend Arturo Saucedo. Continue reading...

The moreish management sim is back featuring its usual tactical depth, but with a more user-friendly road to success – which is bad news for your loved onesIt’s July and the rotund avatar representing me in Football Manager 2016 is unhappy. Leeds United’s pre-season friendly against Dutch side Heracles is going badly. Considering the pounding we’ve taken, the 1-1 score line is flattering to say the least. At least it should raise the value of our goalkeeper, Marco Silvestri, considerably.

Traditional watchmaker plunges into the wearable technology market with new fitness tracker power and smartwatch launchesTraditional watch manufacturer Fossil Group has acquired US fitness-tracker and connected device maker Misfit for $260m (£171m), illustrating just how keen watchmakers are to get into the wearable technology market.

Un ‘Hackatón’ reciente puso la lente digital sobre la quieta revolución que se está dando en la capitalEn la primavera del 2014, a Alonso Martín llevó 30 días poner en marcha el juego Heart Forth Alicia, que por medio de Kickstarter recaudó $232,365 dólares y que se ha convertido en un punto de referencia para los programadores a lo largo de la Ciudad de México. Un referente queatrajó a Zura Guerra, programadora de la misma ciudad, a unirse a la sigilosa revolución del social gaming e indie que se está dando en la ciudad.“Empecé a participar con los programadores generales gracias a Dev F, una escuela de programación,” me contó Guerra cuando nos conocimos en un “hackatón” en junio. “Lo primero que me sorprendió fue la empatía que todos sentían por enseñar lo que sabían; ahí conocí a otras personas y empecé a juntarme con ellas en varios meetups.” Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Friday - my son Albie’s birthday! Continue reading...

Don’t be surprised if you get a Facebook message from someone with the same name as you – or indeed lots of peopleAs anyone who has ever delved into their “Other” inbox on Facebook may know, accepting message requests from strangers is generally a bad idea. But is someone who shares your name truly a stranger?You may be about to find out. The internet has decided chatting people with the same name as you is a thing we do now, or at least for a day. Continue reading...

Analysts warn that automation is now affecting mental labour as well as physical. So what tasks are vulnerable?The fear that robots will destroy jobs and leave a great mass of people languishing in unemployment is almost as old as automation itself. And yet, from the Luddites onwards, the fears have been eventually proved wrong, and the economy has ended up stronger than before.Related: Robots threaten low-paid jobs, says Bank of England's chief economist Continue reading...

Original developer Jon Hare launches Kickstarter campaign, looking for £300k to revive classic football game for PC, Xbox One and PS4Sensible Soccer and Sensible World of Soccer remain two of the world’s most revered football games, decades after their release. Now their creator Jon Hare is reviving them under a new name.Hare has launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to raise at least £300,000 to make Sociable Soccer, which he describes as “the spiritual successor to Sensible Soccer”. The game is slated to launch in late 2016 for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Continue reading...

Once a smartphone leader, BlackBerry’s failure to recognize the rise of mobile browsing nearly sunk the firm. Superior security could be key to its survivalThe CEO of troubled smartphone maker BlackBerry has blamed the company’s declining fortunes on a failure to deal with the “speed of change” in the industry, but claimed the company had pulled itself back “from the edge of death”.John Chen, who took over as BlackBerry CEO in November 2013, admitted that it had once seen itself at the top of the smartphone race, but now finds itself now at the bottom.

Xeros planning to roll out plastic bead technology in the Americas and EuropeXeros, a British technology group that specialises in “waterless” washing machines, has announced plans to raise £40m from shareholders for its further development.The group, which floated on London’s Aim market in March 2014 when it raised £27.6m, said the funds will help it maintain momentum as it rolls out its commercial laundry business in the Americas and Europe. Continue reading...

Google Cultural Institute digitises nearly 5,000 objects to allow virtual tour of museumFrom the Carnelian seal-stone of the Vehdin-Shapur to a 20th-century squirrel parka worn by the Yup’ik of Alaska, the British Museum and Google have announced details of a digital partnership allowing people to view in detail nearly 5,000 objects online.Related: British Museum uses virtual reality to transport visitors to the bronze age Continue reading...

Digital rights management ‘blunder’ leads to users having to delete and reinstall every app they bought or downloaded from App Store

Staff member recorded saying security guards wanted group of six teenagers to leave Melbourne store because they were worried ‘they might steal something’A group of black teenagers was told to leave an Apple store in Melbourne because staff were worried they “might steal something”.A video of the interaction between a Highpoint Apple store staff member and a group of students was uploaded to Facebook on Tuesday night.

Company releases mobile software to unite news notifications and alerts, creating a single livestream on your phone’s lock screenIf the main reason you keep news apps on your phone is their alerts, go ahead and delete them. On Wednesday, Facebook rolled out Notify, an app that is meant to consolidate all the news notifications and alerts on your phone into one livestream that lives on your phone’s lock screen.“Notify from Facebook sends you notifications from the sources you trust, whether you are a sports fan, a film buff, a news junkie or a little bit of everything,” Facebook explained in a video introducing the new app. “Stay up to date on things you care about right on your lock screen.” Continue reading...

Microsoft unveils beta tool on its website that guesses people’s emotions through facial recognition software. But how does that make you feel?Remember when Microsoft developed a tool that tried to guess our age? Of course you do – social media feeds were saturated for weeks with outraged 30-year-olds being told they were 50, and 14-year-olds given a glimmer of hope before attempting to buy alcohol.Now Microsoft’s going further by trying to guess our emotions. Which isn’t at all creepy. Not at all. Try and guess my emotion, Microsoft. It 100% isn’t “creeped out”. Continue reading...