Technology | The Guardian

#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...

Company says ruling is against consumer interests after court dismisses Dyson’s argument that tests discriminate in favour of bagged vacuum cleaners and lead to misleadingly high ratings Continue reading...

11 November 1988: This new phone is bound to be an improvement on the ‘brick’ mobile phones currently on the marketA pocket telephone, smaller and lighter than most calculators were a decade ago, yesterday heralded the second surge of radio communications which could eventually remove the wired phone from office and home.It weighs 130 grams, sits easily in a shirt pocket, needs no external aerial, and will sell for about £150. It is the first product to be demonstrated in Britain’s pioneering of CT2 - a halfway house between the cheap cordless phone in the home and the costly (and overcrowded) cellular car-phone services.

Hamburg prosecutors say managing director may be held responsible for social platform’s alleged failure to remove hate speechProsecutors in Hamburg have launched an investigation into the European head of Facebook over the social platform’s alleged failure to remove racist hate speech, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor has said.The move was announced on Tuesday as German politicians and celebrities voiced concern about the rise of xenophobic comments in German on Facebook and on other social media as the country struggles to cope with the influx of about 1 million refugees this year. Continue reading...

Move comes after EU declared Safe Harbour – the treaty that enabled data to be transferred to the US from Europe for storage – invalidMicrosoft is opening data centres in the UK for the first time, the company’s chief Satya Nadella has announced.

Mark Little, who set up News Corp owned social news agency, takes up role as vice-president of media for Europe and AfricaMark Little, the founder of News Corp owned social news agency Storyful, has been hired as a senior executive across Twitter’s international operation.Little, who sold Dublin-based Storyful to News Corp for £15m in December 2013, left in June after just 18 months saying it’s best to “quit while you’re ahead”.

Slipped into the new investigatory powers bill is a law that could spell the end of encrypted services such as WhatsApp and iMessage.Technology firms could be forced into a no-win situation if the UK government’s investigatory powers bill passes without substantial changes from its current draft form.The legislation includes a number of clauses which are scaring technology firms. Under the proposals they can be required to provide assistance to the government to hack their own users; they can be mandated to open their networks up to bulk interception of data; and they can be required to modify their technologies to make the interception of data easier, even to the extent of removing “electronic protections” applied to them. Continue reading...

This video was posted on Facebook by Barack Obama. Speaking on the White House lawn, he talks about his hope for real conversations, where followers will hear directly from him, with some just-for-fun stuff too. He appeals to Americans to engage with the arguments on climate change

Across Britain, events are being held to bring the humanities to life with a strong digital flavourFrom reconstructing the past to experiencing sound, venues up and down the country will be hoping to win visitors over to the humanities this week.Kicking off on 12 November , the 11-day Being Human festival will not only feature lectures, discussions and analogue activities, but a smorgasbord of digitally infused events. Continue reading...

New Android Wear device follows traditional watchmaker philosophy, suggesting wearables no longer domain of the likes of Apple and SamsungTag Heuer’s first “luxury” Android Wear smartwatch, unveiled in New York on Monday, could be the most important smartwatch launch of 2015.In a year when Apple debuted its first smartwatch, that might sound surprising, but a tech company releasing a smartwatch is expected – for a luxury Swiss watchmaker to do so is a sign that wearable technology is finally growing up. Continue reading...

Facebook’s earliest evangelist says company’s first responsibility is to its shareholders, and engineers’ algorithms have ‘unintended consequences’A generation ago, Sean Parker would have us believe, parents worried that their children were becoming couch potatoes, passive consumers of information dominated by TV. But he said that concern has now shifted in the opposite direction, acknowledging that technology companies have employed “tricks” that encourage users to become “narcissistic, self-involved assholes”.In a characteristically frank discussion at the Techonomy conference in California’s Half Moon Bay, the Napster co-founder said society had gone from worrying about one paradigm to worrying about another. Continue reading...

Deborah Orr (We are fools to think robots make the future better, 7 November) makes a point about the industrial revolution, but gets it backwards. Yes, children worked in poor conditions, as did their parents, but the countryside emptied as the towns filled up because a horrible job in a factory was (and still is in much of the developing world) a better life than as an agricultural labourer.The towns offered wages, improved living conditions, access to better food and the opportunity for continuing education. It is also much easier for labour to organise in an urban setting than scattered across the countryside. If you don’t believe me, you could always ask the hundreds of millions of Chinese who have done exactly as we did as their country industrialised.

Company also behind Match and OkCupid looking to buck trend of recent poor IPOs in wake of Chinese stock market troublesThe New York-based owner of dating brands including Tinder, Match and OkCupid is to press ahead with a flotation valuing the group at $3.1bn (£2.1bn).Match Group will be hoping sufficient investors “swipe right” to get the deal off to a good start. Over the past month, almost every initial public offering (IPO) has priced below its range amid lingering nervousness about new issues initially raised by the Chinese stock market crisis. Continue reading...

Germany’s transport authority says one in four cars will need more than software changes, as Volkswagen decides on compensation for US ownersGermany’s transport ministry has said Volkswagen is likely to need to make more than just software changes to nearly a quarter of its 2.4m diesel cars being recalled in the country as a result of the emissions scandal.The ministry told the Associated Press on Monday that of the vehicles being recalled for fixes in Germany, the Federal Motor Transport Authority “currently expects that approximately 540,000 will also need hardware changes”. It said Volkswagen would inform owners of the details. Continue reading...

The irradiated landscape of the Commonwealth is packed with activities for the fun-seeking catastrophe survivor. Here are the must-dosFinally – it’s the end of the world. Again. After years of waiting, months of hype and some frenzied last-minute merchandising, Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic opus is back, this time staking out a ruined version of Massachusetts known as the Commonwealth. It’s 200 years after a nuclear war and you, as the sole survivor from a shelter named Vault 111, must make your way in a dangerous new land.Much of your time will be spent following the main story (which very little is currently known about) and dispatching hundreds of raiders, super mutants, and other baddies along the way. But while you’re at it, here are 10 other activities to try, both practical and pleasurable. Continue reading...

From Instagram’s latest spin-off and a neat way to relax on your smartphone to Minecraft Story Mode and a puzzle game based on Mozart’s Magic Flute opera Continue reading...

LifePaint promises great things in terms of saving cyclists’ lives, but our reporter is distinctly unimpressed by its glow-in-the dark claimsI’ve never been one for hi-vis. It is not merely vanity, though I admit luminous yellow is just not my colour. It’s that too many cyclists see it as a panacea, a fluorescent force-field that will protect them from the dangers of the road, whereas the truth is you can be done up head-to-toe as a highlighter pen and it’ll not help you at all if you’re always cowering in a driver’s blind spot.I don’t wear “proper” cycling gear to ride two miles to the Guardian’s Manchester office each day. If it’s raining, I’ll don a waterproof jacket (or, more honestly, take the car). But generally I’m in my civvies and so am arguably the prime market for Volvo’s new LifePaint, a “water-based reflective safety spray”, which promises to turn ordinary clothes into beacons when in direct glare of headlights. Continue reading...

Keith Aldridge alerted CEO’s office to call from fraudster 14 months before firm had first of series of data breaches

The TV property guru on her technophobe co-presenter Phil Spencer, her love of Apple and why she likes to ‘microwave’ her hair curlersAre you a gadget fiend or a technophobe?I’m all about usefulness. I never think: “That piece of tech is beautiful, I want it,” but if it’s useful to me, I’ll happily fit it into my life. Continue reading...

A clever robot, a lukewam bloodbath, an eight-sworded android and some vivid imaginations in Paris★★★ Continue reading...

Dublin played host to one of the world’s largest startup gatheringsMore than 42,000 people flocked to Ireland to one of the biggest tech conferences in the world, Dublin’s web summit. Once described as “the best technology conference on the planet”, the gathering is a seething mass of startups pitching ideas, investors looking for the next Google or Facebook, tech thinkers talking about the latest trends, and the odd celebrity giving their visions for the future. Here is what we learned at this year’s meeting of techie minds.Tinder says it’s about long-term love, not short-lived thrills Continue reading...

Instagram superstar, comic, rapper ... and plagiarist, too? Meet Josh Ostrovsky, aka the Fat JewThe internet sensation and now memoirist Josh Ostrovsky, aka the Fat Jew, is 15 minutes late to meet me, which is annoying because he’s actually chatting with a friend right outside this coffee shop window. He’s wearing a hoodie, novelty sunglasses and a gold necklace that reads “Life” in Hebrew. He’s a big man with a shaggy afro which, when he spends time on it, can be manipulated into a kind of unicorn’s horn. Today it’s not a horn. People recognise him. Passersby look impressed. We’re in an area of Brooklyn called Dumbo, and I’m sitting inside the cafe with two of his publicists, who insist on being present throughout the interview. It is all weirdly corporate, given that Ostrovsky’s an Instagram comedian; but last March, Time magazine named him one of the “30 most influential people on the internet”.He started out as an entertainment reporter and a member of the rap group Team Facelift, but since 2013 Ostrovsky has become increasingly famous for his vastly successful memes and viral videos. On Instagram, as @thefatjewish, he has 6.4 million followers. Fans include Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Kanye West and millions of teenagers. Consequently, as Time explained, “brands have started to pay him for exposure to that audience”; these brands include Stella Artois, Burger King, Apple and Budweiser. Some of his videos are perceptive and funny: for example, when he staged a spinning class for homeless people on Citi Bikes that weren’t in use (“Indoor cycling is not available to everybody. I want the homeless people of New York to have really gorgeous bodies.”). When the Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer incurred the internet’s wrath for shooting a much-loved lion while big-game hunting in Zimbabwe, Ostrovsky posted on Instagram a photograph of the cowardly lion from The Wiz with the caption: “Going to start dressing like a Lion. That way cops know that if they kill me. White people will avenge me.” Continue reading...

‘If you have driving aims other than feeling like a giant and going extremely fast, think again’The Vauxhall Adam Grand Slam was a variation on the Adam, designed to be more appealing to men; then, manliness being such a difficult quality to pin down, they changed the name to the S. Everybody knows that men love initials, especially consonants.You cannot fault it on performance. Its 1.4-litre, turbo-charged, four-cylinder petrol engine could get a tractor to a decent speed over time; a car this size is at 62mph from cold in the time it takes you to wonder how long it will be before you have a panic attack and jump out, shouting, “I don’t need an MRI! I’m fine with a brain tumour – I’ll get it treated homoeopathically!” (This, if you really want to put a number on it, is 8.5 seconds.) Continue reading...