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Having developed Thomas Was Alone and Volume, the indie games designer is both a one-man studio and a devoted collaborator. But what does his work actually involve?How do you define your role when you are essentially a one-person games development studio?

Sonos, LG, Pure, Naim or Bang & Olufsen – who makes the best multi-room sound system?Being able to saunter around your home with your favourite tunes following you from room to room is an appealing idea. Being able to do this without the aid of wires is even more seductive. Fold in a subscription to Deezer or another streaming service and you should have a seamless way of bathing in music old and new throughout your domicile, but which multi-room speaker system should you opt for to make this dream come true?Multi-room systems work by piggy-backing your home wi-fi network to broadcast music from your computer, tablet or smartphone to speakers dotted around your home. The music could either be ripped or downloaded files, tunes from a streaming service such as Spotify or Tidal, or content from a internet radio channel.

Goofy gridiron and seagoing skirmishes are welcome; less so the return of the superannuated Pro Skater franchiseIn short, it’s blood and pigskin in this sports-strategy game, which mashes American football with goofy fantasy. Lead a small team of professional athletes to glory in a savage game as likely to leave them dead as rich. On the pitch, call their plays and try to keep them alive; off the pitch, scout for talent and sponsors. The ref’s a goblin; the commentators are an ogre and a vampire; players punch more often than they pass. It’s like very much like watching the Premier League, then. Continue reading...

Karen McNamara supports bill co-sponsored by Labor MPs Tim Watts and Terri Butler to crack down on sharing of intimate sexual imagery without consentLiberal backbencher Karen McNamara has broken ranks with her Coalition colleagues to support Labor legislation aimed at punishing people who share intimate sexual imagery without consent, a practice known as revenge porn.Labor MPs Tim Watts and Terri Butler co-sponsored a private members bill introduced in the House of Representatives on Monday that would crack down on the practice. Continue reading...

Goodman, MP for Bishop Auckland, asked why, if China was so great, had the health secretary’s Chinese wife moved to the UKThe Labour MP Helen Goodman has been criticised after a tweet from her account asked why, “if China is so great”, Jeremy Hunt’s wife – who is from the country – had come to England.If China is so great, why did @Jeremy_Hunt 's wife come to England? Continue reading...

Official figures show rise in cases, with incidents including drones being used for sexual offences and ferrying drugs into prisonsA UFO hovering outside the 72nd floor of London’s Shard skyscraper and a flying camera hurtling through the skies over Hyde Park are just two of the rising number of “drone-related incidents” reported to police forces across the UK.Figures provided to the Guardian following a freedom of information request show a significant increase in the number of cases where members of the public have reported nuisance drone flying to their local force. Thames Valley police recorded 21 incidents in 2014, rising to 80 this year. The Metropolitan police logged 21 cases in 2015, up from one the previous year. Continue reading...

The Olympic gymnast on living in a ‘brilliant party house’, his 50 pairs of headphones and why he wouldn’t want to travel in a driverless carAre you a gadget fiend?I do like gadgets, yes. Growing up in a single-parent family meant we didn’t always have the money to buy the latest thing, so the more successful I’ve got the more I’ve enjoyed being able to see what’s out there. I have loads: cameras, video cameras, consoles, headsets, about 50 pairs of headphones. Continue reading...

The seeds, pips and stones of many varieties of fruit contain small amounts of cyanide, so here’s your handy guide on the pips not to eatYou’re highly unlikely to manage to eat enough apple seeds to poison yourself, so you can rest easy if you occasionally swallow one. Apples contain a compound called amygdalin in their seeds, which is a cyanide-and-sugar based molecule. If the seed is chewed or otherwise broken, human or animal enzymes come into contact with the amygdalin and effectively cut off the sugar part of the molecule. The remainder can then decompose to produce the poisonous gas hydrogen cyanide.Cyanide toxicity is experienced by humans at doses of around 0.5–3.5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. Symptoms of cyanide poisoning include stomach cramps, headache, nausea and vomiting, and can culminate in cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, coma and death. A fatal dose for humans can be as low as 1.5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. In a recent study, the amygdalin content of apple seeds was found to be approximately 3 milligrams per gram of seeds (one seed is approximately 0.7g). Continue reading...

New technology is polarising the country – but Frédéric Mazzella believes that he can help change the way the French think about workWhen Frédéric Mazzella was struggling to find a business model for his long-distance ride-sharing company, the “It will never work” doomsayers were legion. The young entrepreneur reminded those who suggested he was wasting his time of his Italian roots. “I can eat pasta for a while longer,” he would say.Today, Mazzella, founder and president of BlaBlaCar, has proved the pessimists wrong. And how. His company is worth an estimated €1.5bn and in the last year alone has gone from 10 million to 20 million “members” – car drivers and users – and recently raised $200m in investment, a first for a French startup company. Continue reading...

We share some of the newest, most fun and helpful tech ideasA robotic toy comprised of electronic cubes, Robo hopes to be the Lego of the digital age, allowing children or rookie coders to build functioning, programmable robots with interchangeable parts commanded by a Robo app. With the Robo app, the right blocks and a rainy afternoon, you could – according to the Kickstarter page – have a three-wheeled robot nosing around the room, obeying commands and announcing the weather forecast. Assuming the Kickstarter crowdfunding is successful, a fairly primitive Robo starter kit will cost £85 and arrive through your door next summer. As a nod to its forebear, the Robo is also “Lego-compatible”, meaning you can artistically bedeck your creation with retro bricks. Continue reading...

Two scientists and two artists give the answers you might not expectDAVID COPEComposer, author and professor emeritus of music at the University of California, Santa Cruz Continue reading...

‘It is insanely powerful. I felt like the Hulk bursting out of his shirt’In my day, a Honda Civic looked like the car you would drive if you were going on an IT training course in Milton Keynes and wanted to fit in: reliable, characterless, neither large nor small, fast nor slow. At some point in the intervening decade, the designers or maybe the entire Honda brand have had a midlife crisis.If I utter the phrase “black with red detailing”, you’ll think you know what I mean; you do not. The body looks like a Batmobile. The wheels look as though they were deliberately conceived as fresh wounds – a kind of Bruce Willis-esque aesthetic statement: “I’m so hard I haven’t even noticed I’m bleeding.” There is a spoiler at the back so substantial and proud that it would only really make sense if this vehicle could fly. Continue reading...

Engineering staff likely to be most affected by layoffs following Jack Dorsey’s appointment as permanent chief executive, claims Re/codeTwitter is planning company-wide layoffs next week, technology news website Re/code reported on Friday. The news comes after Jack Dorsey was appointed permanent chief executive on Monday.

Interstellar director tells festival audience about the importance of using real film, as opposed to digital technologyCinema chains need to drastically improve the experience they offer to customers or the next generation of moviegoers will stop going, the film director Christopher Nolan has said.British-born Nolan, one of the most the powerful film-makers in the world, was speaking at the London Film Festival (LFF) on Friday about the importance of using real film, as opposed to digital technology. That includes cinemas still having projectors to show, for example, 70mm film. Continue reading...

Rumoured to be heading for George Osborne’s sell-off list, the mapping agency has plotted a route through the digital age to remain a unique assetOn a housing estate in Southampton, surveyor Alyson Whiting is painstakingly recording the outline of a curved flowerbed. One of a small army of field workers for the Ordnance Survey, she is using a tablet computer wirelessly linked to a satellite antenna atop a long pole – affectionately known among the national mapping agency’s staff as a “Gandalf stick”.The agency’s headquarters previously stood on this site, but now red-brick family homes have sprung up. With them have come new roads, new pavements, new addresses. Whiting diligently records the shape and size of them all.

Company dumps apps that use potentially dangerous root certificates and VPNs to filter adverts outside of mobile Safari on an iPhone or iPadApple has started removing some adblockers from its App Store after they rocketed to the top of the download charts.

How difficult could it be to build a jail and keep everyone inside? With this impressively detailed simulation, you’re about to find outIn September 2012, the small British games studio Introversion Software made a vital decision. It would initially release its latest project, Prison Architect, not as a complete product, but as an unfinished “alpha” allowing early purchasers to give feedback on how the game should be developed.This “early access” model of game development, popularised by the massively successful Minecraft, can be very effective, lessening the risk for the game’s publishers of producing a flop while allowing keen players to feel part of the project. But it can also lead to controversies – studios often promise much to their early community then spectacularly under deliver. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterSlightly later than scheduled - it’s Friday! Continue reading...

John Sculley, played by Jeff Daniels in Danny Boyle’s awards-tipped drama, refers to the film as ‘a perfectionist product’ but says it doesn’t show ‘the complete’ pictureFormer Apple CEO John Sculley has revealed that he thinks Steve Jobs would have been mostly impressed with Danny Boyle’s Oscar-tipped new biopic.Related: iSorry: Aaron Sorkin apologises to Apple's Tim Cook over Steve Jobs biopic Continue reading...

Great screen, good camera and snappy performance are good at this price – but lack of fingerprint scanner and wireless charging hurt longevityMotorola’s Moto X Style aims to be a flagship smartphone on a budget, with a big screen, curvaceous body and quality camera.

Asked if he’s concerned about Apple’s self-driving car ambitions, Tesla CEO replied: ‘Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch?’Outspoken Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has poked fun at Apple, saying his employees refer to the tech company as the “Tesla graveyard”.Dismissing claims that Apple is poaching key members of staff from his own firm to work on its long-rumoured self-driving car project, Musk said: “Important engineers? They have hired people we’ve fired. We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard’. Continue reading...

Pyrotechnics expert Darryl Fleming, who worked on London 2012 and the Rugby World Cup, gives his verdict on seven fireworks “cakes” for bonfire nightSingle-ignition barrages, or “cakes” as the pros call them, are increasingly a favoured option for amateur firework displays. Consisting of zig-zagging rows of explosives that ignite consecutively, they fire an unpredictable collection of bangs, candles and stars into the sky, compounding their excitement with the element of surprise. Continue reading...

Opposition suggests prime minister’s use of non-government emails and mobile apps such as Wickr and Confide could be tactic to avoid legitimate scrutinyMalcolm Turnbull has defended his use of non-government emails and secret messaging applications such as Wickr after the opposition suggested it could be a tactic to avoid legitimate scrutiny.The Australian reported on Friday that the prime minister had been operating a private email server outside the federal parliament’s secure system, and had also used apps such as Confide and Wickr to communicate with colleagues and journalists. Continue reading...

German toy company offers an explanation after a California mother sparked outrage on Facebook about a toy character that comes with a neck shackleThe Playmobil toy company has claimed a dark-skinned figure wearing a neck shackle was meant to “represent a pirate who was a former slave in a historical context” after a mother complained that it was racist. Continue reading...

Cyber-attacks were apparently blocked by ‘threat monitoring’ product from October 2013 but server was exposed during prior three months, document saysHillary Clinton’s private email server, which stored some 55,000 pages of emails from her time as secretary of state, was the subject of attempted cyber-attacks originating in China, South Korea and Germany after she left office in early 2013, according to a congressional document obtained by the Associated Press.

Adblocker? Splitscreen? An automated selfies folder? These expert insights into Apple’s latest OS will surely put you on cloud 9“Barely better than the iPhone 6 Plus” review of the new iPhone 6S Plus Continue reading...

Alexander Heilner’s startling images reveal beauties we do not see“We were flying above a huge , immense desert,” says photographer, Alexander Heilner. “It was a monochromatic, rusty red colour as far as the eye could see, but in the middle was this jewel of blue and white.”It was neither oasis nor mirage. Part of the Intrepid mine, the vivid azure lagoon, so at odds with the surrounding Utah desert, is a potash evaporation pond, vital for fertiliser. Continue reading...

Artist Behnaz Farahi has created a ‘conscious’ garment that movesIt’s a garment that might attract a second glance – made as it is of an unusual array of 3D printed quills. But beware, the scrutiny is mutual. Designed by LA-based artist and architect Behnaz Farahi and on show at the Artists in Residence exhibition, Pier 9, Autodesk in San Francisco next month, this stylish top, titled Caress of the Gaze, is “conscious” – the cropped tunic has a concealed eye-tracking camera that allows the garment to respond physically to a passing stare. Continue reading...

Plus how far are Americans from Starbucks?, genome sequencing in 50 hours, the rise of 'context' and moreA quick burst of 9 links for you to chew over, as picked by the Technology team Continue reading...

Retailer opens up new chapter in battle between ebooks and physical books as e-reader was ‘getting virtually no sales’Waterstones is to stop selling the Kindle e-reader in most of its stores in what industry bosses have said could become a watershed moment in the battle between physical and digital books.James Daunt, the managing director of Waterstones, told the Guardian he has removed Kindles from most of the books chain’s 280 stores because they were “getting virtually no sales”. Continue reading...

Planned protest and controversy over untactful tie-in t-shirts are backdrop for gala screening of film telling story of the campaign to secure women the voteRelated: Suffragette review – a valuable, vital film about how human rights are wonIt has taken a decade to get off the ground, but as Suffragette received its UK premiere as the opening film of the London film festival, the film’s director revealed that she was determined not to be knocked off course in her quest to make her 10-year “passion project”. “A film is never easy,” said Sarah Gavron, “but this was a tough proposition because we wanted to stick to our guns. We pushed through all the obstacles.” Continue reading...

Three British companies have teamed up to create an anti-drone ‘death ray’. The device uses a directional antenna to ‘shoot’ interference at a remote-operated drone, causing it to fall from the sky. Engineered by UK firms Blighter, Enterprise and Chess, the device is distributed in the US by Colorado-based Liteye, which hopes to sell it to the US government and airports Continue reading...

Google says it ‘takes privacy very seriously’ after motor magazine reports Porsche chose to use Apple CarPlay after privacy fearsGoogle has denied claims that its operating system for in-car entertainment, Android Auto, spies on users.The report, from Motor Trend magazine, said that Porsche had chosen not to use Android Auto in its newest cars, instead opting for Apple Carplay over privacy fears. Continue reading...

Search company unveils Accelerated Mobile Pages in bid to work with publishers, ad companies and rival platformsGoogle is attempting to counter the threat from ad-blocking and rivals Facebook and Apple by radically improving the loading speed of web pages on smartphones and tablets.Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) aims to simplify the structure of mobile web pages and place the data needed to deliver them closer to users both physically and virtually in a bid to to achieve almost “instant” delivery of articles to anywhere in the world. Continue reading...

Screenwriter appears on US television to note that the tech guru’s widow Laurene Powell Jobs and Apple CEO Tim Cook have not yet seen Oscar-tipped dramaThe Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has hit back at claims family and former colleagues of Steve Jobs are fiercely opposing his controversial forthcoming eponymous biopic of the late Apple co-founder.The Wall Street Journal wrote on 4 October that the tech guru’s widow Laurene Powell Jobs had repeatedly tried to “kill” Danny Boyle’s film, which stars Michael Fassbender in the title role. Current Apple CEO Tim Cook also described recent attempts to immortalise the late Jobs on the big screen as “opportunistic” during an appearance on the Late Show With Stephen Colbert last month. Continue reading...

Will Been Choice, which hit the App Store this week, be allowed to stay up?For the first time since it introduced its own ad-blocking support, Apple has approved an app which allows users to block adverts inside mobile apps – even the company’s own ad-supported Apple News.The app, named Been Choice, is only available on the US app store, where it arrived on Tuesday. It uses the new ad-blocking features included in the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system to let users block adverts in the Safari web browser, similar to other adblockers such as Crystal or Purity. Continue reading...

Kingdom Holding and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal together own more than 5% of US company after $50m investmentSaudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and his investment firm now own more than 5% of Twitter, his office has said.Kingdom Holding has paid $50m (£33m) to double its stake in the microblogging site to 0.72%, the Riyadh-based company said in a separate bourse statement on Wednesday. Continue reading...

The semantics of the internet encourage us not to worry about who or what actually has control of our dataFor most of us, how we perceive the internet is significantly shaped by the language used to describe it: say “web” and dew-dropped silk comes to mind, “net” and woven knots of string, “information superhighway” and bright cars racing in the dark.These names describe a system of disparate machines, giving shape to the network. Which name we choose has a large effect on how we perceive the structures that carry all our photos and emails and bank balances and work and subscriptions and love letters and affairs and charity donations. Continue reading...

‘I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn’ emails cost the company millionsSocial network LinkedIn has agreed to pay $13m to users to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing it of sending too many unsolicited emails to users.The lawsuit took issue with LinkedIn’s “add connections” feature, which lets users import their personal contacts into the social network (the source of the infamous subject line “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn”). Continue reading...

Immigration department decides to contest ruling that it denied procedural fairness to asylum seekers whose personal details were disclosedThe immigration minister, Peter Dutton, is appealing against a landmark federal court decision that found his department’s response to a major data breach of asylum seekers’ personal details was “unfair to a significant degree”.On Wednesday Crikey revealed the minister was seeking to appeal against the decision in the high court.

Retailer becomes first on high street to launch such a service, charging flat fee of £3.95 and offering four home delivery slots every day

Managing director James Daunt says: ‘Sales continue to be pitiful so we are taking the display space back.’The UK’s largest book retailer is removing Amazon’s Kindle ebooks from its stores nationwide and replacing them with print books due to “pitiful sales”.Waterstones, which teamed up with Amazon in 2012 to sell the electronic reader in its stores, will use the display space for physical paperbacks and hardbacks instead. Continue reading...

New feature hopes to attract new and disengaged users to the social network with up-to-the-minute curation of breaking news and the day’s top storiesTwitter has launched Moments, a new service which hopes to show users the day’s most popular stories, as the 140-character social network takes a stab at news curation.

The crowdfunding website, which normally backs creative projects, will raise money for humanitarian relief in a project featuring Guardian video reportageA White House initiative on behalf of Syrian refugees has brought together the crowdfunding website Kickstarter and the United Nations refugee agency for a weeklong fundraising push that all sides hope could represent a breakthrough in charitable giving for Syria.Related: Syrian refugee crisis: why has it become so bad? Continue reading...

Sentencing council says effect on victim of losing personal information must be taken into account, regardless of item’s valueThe loss of precious photographs or sensitive personal information when a smartphone is stolen will result in tougher sentences for thieves under new guidelines, with less focus on the monetary value of the item.The sentencing council rules, published on Monday, say sentences should now take into account whether a stolen possession was of substantial value to the loser – regardless of monetary worth and would result in emotional distress or a loss of confidence caused by the crime. Continue reading...

Transport for London is looking to clarify whether using smartphones to calculate fares amounts to a taximeter, which is banned in private hire vehiclesThe ride-hailing app Uber is at the centre of a crucial high court case as London’s transport authority seeks clarity on whether smartphones can lawfully be used to calculate fares.After a day hearing evidence from all sides, the judge is widely expected to give his decision on Tuesday. If he rules against Uber, the verdict will be viewed as a victory for black-cab drivers and other minicab groups who feel the disruptive tech-focused competitor has not been regulated firmly enough during its three years of rapid growth in London. Continue reading...

28 injured after British multimillionaire Paul Bailey lost control of Porsche 918 Spyder and ploughed into spectators

From stamping out abuse to finally deciding how many characters is enough, here’s what should be in Jack Dorsey’s own ‘While you were away’ feedTwitter’s character limit dates back to the days of SMS messaging: it’s long enough to include the whole message, an 18 character username, one colon and one space per 160 character text. Now Twitter offers pictures, videos, and links, and is barely used over text message at all. As a result, users have taken to screenshotting large paragraphs of text to tweet longer missives. The company has to decide whether it’s going to attempt to stay a fast and brief messaging service or become a slower, richer social media site – and there are suggestions that the new chief executive Jack Dorsey may be backing the biggest change in the site’s history. Continue reading...

Ridley Scott’s film eyeing all-time October box-office opening mark set by Alfonso Cuarón’s 2013 sci-fi thriller, but Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk stumbles on Imax-focused limited releaseRidley Scott space thriller The Martian scored a stellar $55m to top the US box office on its debut this weekend.The impressive figures could yet see the critically acclaimed film overtake October record-holder Gravity when final figures are in: on estimates based on its Friday showing, Scott’s movie is just $700,000 short of the $55.7m record posted by Alfonso Cuarón’s Oscar-winning sci-fi thriller in 2013. Continue reading...

The PS4, Xbox One and Wii U consoles have been around for a few years. Might now be the moment to upgrade your old machine without spending too much?It’s the time of year that every gamer loves: the shops are filled with brand new PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo releases and you can’t switch on the television without an advert for some blockbusting sci-fi shooter attacking your eyeballs.But if you’ve resisted the lure of the latest games consoles for the last two years, is now the time to dive in? Continue reading...