Technology | The Guardian

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

Metropolitan police say a 15-year-old boy has been arrested in County Antrim over the hacking of the telecoms company TalkTalkA 15-year-old boy has been arrested in Northern Ireland in connection with the cyber-attack on TalkTalk’s website.The arrest is the first major development since the phone and broadband provider said last week it had been hacked, prompting warnings from the company that the bank details and personal information of its four million customers may have been accessed. Continue reading...

New York attorney general’s office tells Time Warner, Verizon and Cablevision it is concerned their ‘fast lanes’ and premium services may be false advertisingA group of major US internet providers have been told to prove their “fast lanes” and premium services are any quicker than ordinary internet access.The office of New York’s attorney general has written to Time Warner, Verizon and Cablevision raising concerns that subscribers might not be getting the speeds advertised. Senior enforcement counsel Tim Wu requested detailed information by 8 November. He warned records could be subpoenaed and legal action taken to stop any deceptive business practices. Continue reading...

Hedge fund levels claims of data falsification and misrepresentation of financial position by AIM-listed mobile phone software developerThe chief executive and chief financial officer of Globo, an AIM-listed technology group, have resigned amid allegations of falsification of data and misrepresentation of the company’s financial position.The resignations come days after a scathing report into the company’s financial position by the US hedge fund Quintessential Capital Group and the suspension of stock market trading in Globo shares. The hedge fund claimed Globo, which was valued at about £100m, had been massively overstating its revenue and profit.

Community of horror writers keep the ‘ghost train’ alive by crafting scary stories for an audience of millions – with plots so good it’s hard to tell what’s true“Fear is a wonderful thing, in small doses,” Neil Gaiman once said. “You ride the ghost train into the darkness, knowing that eventually the doors will open and you will step out into the daylight once again.”These days it feels like there are fewer and fewer ways to get on that “ghost train” of delighting in the suspense of a scary story. The tradition of swapping tales around a campfire is a rare occurrence in modern life, and smartphone screens too often get in the way, and stop us from getting lost in a book. Continue reading...

The site has introduced an update to its search feature which includes every public post ever madeFacebook users are being encouraged to double-check their privacy settings after the social network introduced an update to its search feature which adds almost 2 trillion older posts by its members to the index.Previously, Facebook’s search feature was largely limited to groups, events and locations, with individuals’ public posts difficult to find without directly navigating to the user’s profile page. Continue reading...

Dido Harding says TalkTalk will ‘thrive’ in greater transparency with customers but that it would be naive to suggest hack could not happen againTalkTalk chief executive Dido Harding has insisted the company’s cybersecurity is “head and shoulders” better than its competitors in the wake of the massive hack attack affecting thousands of customers.In an interview with the Guardian, Harding conceded it would be “naive” to rule out the prospect of the telecoms firm suffering a similar cyber-attack in the future, describing the threat from hackers as “the crime of our generation”. Continue reading...

In this episode of our daily GameCity show we’re talking to Goldeneye designer Martin Hollis, The Chinese Room’s Dan Pinchbeck and original GTA producer Gary PennIt’s our second day of live audio broadcasts from the GameCity festival in Nottingham.Join us for an hour of chat with legendary game designer Martin Hollis (GoldenEye, Perfect Dark), Dan Pinchbeck co-founder of The Chinese Room (Dear Esther, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture) and Gary Penn of Denki, who oversaw the first two Grand Theft Auto titles, and wrote for seminal Commodore 64 magazine, ZZap 64. We’re also joined by UK industry veteran Alison Beasley. Continue reading...

The fad for colouring has reached the mechanical cutaway, and Haynes’s manual is a winnerAsk anyone (well, let’s be honest, any man) about engineering ‘cutaways’ and they’ll go misty eyed. Up there with Hornby model trains and Airfix plane kits, these incredibly detailed diagrams of the inner workings of everything from Bessemer iron converters to Apollo space crafts have the power to reduce men to a state of slack-jawed reverence.Haynes, famous for its maintenance manuals, has now brought out a book of them. And, as if that’s not exciting enough, the idea is that you can colour in the diagrams, too. Currently six of Amazon’s top 10 bestsellers are colouring-in books. Animals, flowers, swirly patterns… pathetic really. But classic cars? Now that makes a lot of sense. I’ve finished the Porsche 911 and have just made a start on a Triumph Spitfire. Continue reading...

Warning that telecom firm’s security breach could cause problems that will last for years, including identity theft risksRegulators must be given significant new “US-style” powers to tackle the escalating problem of online fraud in the wake of the cyberattack that potentially potentially compromised the security of millions of TalkTalk customers, IT experts said. Their call came amid warnings that the security breach at the telecoms provider could cause problems for its victims that will last for years.Some TalkTalk customers have complained that their bank accounts and credit cards have been targeted since Wednesday’s attack. But the TalkTalk chief executive, Dido Harding, insisted the data stolen in the cyberattack would not allow criminals to plunder customers’ bank accounts. Continue reading...

Firm says customer data stolen ‘materially lower’ than thought and would not allow money to be taken from bank accountsTalkTalk has said the amount of customers’ financial information stolen by hackers is “materially lower” than first thought and would not allow money to be taken from bank accounts.The embattled telecoms company said on Saturday that the cyber-attack, which took place on Wednesday, targeted its website and not its core systems. Continue reading...

The host of National Geographic’s StarTalk on how he chooses his guests, why his subject is nothing to fear – and what he wants from presidential candidates

Sussex teenagers create ‘a virtual memory jar’ to beat the stress and pressure of social mediaA group of teenagers has created an app that offers an antidote to Britain’s “share everything” social media culture.Memory Star allows users to create happy memories in a “virtual memory jar”, which they can revisit at any time to give themselves a boost when they are feeling down. Continue reading...

Whether you want to roleplay as a Jedi warrior, record your own Star Wars scenes or swap digital trading-cards, the app stores will provideStar Wars fans around the world are daring to hope that new film The Force Awakens will be as good as its promo clip makes it look – or at least better than The Phantom Menace. Early ticket sales suggest optimism on that point.But with two months to go until the new movie premieres, how can you fill the time? Unsurprisingly, there are apps for that. In fact, Star Wars has generated a whole mini-industry of mobile games and apps in its own right. Continue reading...

Every morning this week, Guardian games editor Keith Stuart and games writer Jordan Erica Webber are broadcasting a live chat show from the GameCity festival in NottinghamThe GameCity festival kicks off today in Nottingham’s National Videogame Arcade. The annual event, now in its tenth year, showcases games from around the world, from the smallest indie treats to the biggest Triple A hits.Every day of the festival, Guardian games editor Keith Stuart and games writer Jordan Erica Webber will be hosting a morning chat show, featuring developers showing their games at the event. And we’re streaming live from 8.45am each morning. Continue reading...

Boss apologises for breach which could have compromised financial details of up to 4 million people, amid speculation of Islamic militant involvementTalkTalk has said it does not know how many of its 4 million customers have been affected by a “significant and sustained” cyber-attack which could have compromised credit card and bank details.Dido Harding, the chief executive, apologised to customers for the third cyber-attack affecting the telecommunications firm in the past 12 months but said the breaches were “completely unrelated”. Continue reading...

Credit card details may have been compromised by ‘significant and sustained’ cyber-attack on telecoms company

The online retailer’s shares spiked 10% in after-hours trading as investors reacted to the $79m third-quarter profit reaped in part from its cloud computing servicesAmazon beat Wall Street expectations on Thursday, reporting a surprise profit, helped by rapid growth in its cloud computing business. Shares in the online retailer spiked 10% in after-hours trading as investors reacted to news that the company had posted a $79m profit for the third quarter. Analysts had expected Amazon to post a loss.The share surge added close to $5bn to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s fortune with the value of his 82.9m shares increasing $4.89bn. Continue reading...

Alphabet reports 13% rise in quarterly profits boosted by strong advertising sales driven by YouTube and mobile searchStock in Alphabet – formerly known as Google Inc – jumped in after-hours trading on the news the company had beaten Wall Street expectations with an earnings per share of $5.73.The company reported a 13% rise in quarterly revenue, boosted by strong advertising sales driven by YouTube and mobile search, it said. Its advertising line-items seemed to suggest a slightly different story – the company’s cost-per-click (how much it receives for every ad a user clicks on) was down 11% year-over-year, though its aggregate paid clicks metric was up 23%.

The Federal Communications Commission is ending a system that can cost inmates up to $17 a minute – cutting calls to between 11 and 22 cents a minuteFederal regulators moved to cap the costs of prison phone calls on Thursday in a move to end a system that has driven the price of a call as high as $17 a minute.At a meeting in Washington the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to cap rates on inmate calls made from one state to another. Prison calls have been driven sky high by fees charged by telephone companies, commissions and fees charged by prisons to monitor calls and for other services. Continue reading...

How user interfaces are designed to trick us. Plus, the legacy of Victorian computing pioneer Ada LovelaceEver subscribed to a mailing list by mistake? Booked travel insurance without noticing? Then you've fallen for a Dark Pattern.This week on the podcast we investigate the murky world of Dark Patterns: user interfaces that use psychological techniques to trick us into doing things we might otherwise not do. Continue reading...

Internet giant says funding will have ‘no strings attached’, with larger grants needing approval from a council including the Telegraph’s Murdoch MacLennanGoogle has launched its €150m (£109m) fund for European publishers to tap to develop new digital news projects, with large-scale grants needing approval from a council including Telegraph chief Murdoch MacLennan.Google announced its intention to launch the innovation fund in April as part of its Digital News Initiative that aims to support and improve historically often fractious relations with European publishers. Continue reading...

This week’s YouTube roundup also features Lewis Hamilton’s nail-biting finales, a very long badminton rally and Bacary Sagna going Back to the Future1) All pixels, all, well, mainly, perfect: the Fifa video game story, while retro game fans will doubtless enjoy our gallery of football gaming. “You’re a goalscoring, superstar hero!” – relive the marvellous Sensible Soccer theme in its entirety and sticking with Sensi, here’s a fantastic collection of real-life goals that could have come straight from the joystick and some crackers from the game itself. There is more. Roberto Carlos gets the Sensi treatment; Anglia News report on the game in 1992; Sensible Soccer Meets Bulldog Blighty; keep it in the air; the Cannon Soccer Amiga Format Special; Sensible World of Moon Soccer; and Unsensible Soccer. That has the top-end of the market covered, unlike Ashes Cricket 2013 however, which scraped the barrel before it was withdrawn from sale; equally International Rugby Challenge singularly failed to match Sensi’s success. Finally, when real sport fails, enter the properly bonkers sci-fi dystopia of Charles Barkley – “One billion b-balls dribbling simultaneously throughout the galaxy!” – in Barkley: Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden.2) “I’m getting tired just watching it.” Long badminton rally is very long. Continue reading...

DisneyLife, to launch in November, offers music and books as well as movies including Frozen, the Toy Story franchise and classics such as Snow WhiteDisney is to take on Netflix and Amazon Prime with a UK streaming service that will make its films, TV shows, books and music content available for £9.99 a month.The new service, DisneyLife, will launch next month as an app for Apple iOS or Android mobile and tablet devices. Continue reading...

Latest Android update is most refined yet, with powerful new Now on Tap features and extensive app permission control giving the power back to the usersThe latest version of Android boosts battery life and adds new advanced search features making it Google’s most polished operating system yet.Android 6.0 Marshmallow is already available on Google’s Nexus devices and LG and others have announced that they are bringing updates to their top-end smartphones within weeks. Continue reading...

Australia’s opposition leader, Bill Shorten, says the sharing economy is here to stay and has released six principles that will guide his approach to regulating itBill Shorten has called for “tailored, light-touch rules” for sharing-economy services such as Airbnb and Uber so that emerging operators pay their fair share of tax and customers’ safety is protected.On Thursday, the federal Labor leader released six principles that would guide his approach to regulating the sharing economy, although the details would be subject to talks with state and territory governments. Continue reading...

After talks with Xi Jinping in Downing Street, David Cameron hails greater cooperation along with trade deals including nuclear power investmentChina has agreed not to use cyber-espionage to steal commercial secrets from the UK and its president spoke positively about improving human rights, following talks with David Cameron on the second day of the state visit.Appearing side-by-side with Xi in Downing Street, the prime minister used a short press conference to brush aside concerns about working so closely with an undemocratic nation to announce unprecedented cooperation on sensitive issues of security. “I’m clear that the UK is China’s best partner in the west,” he said. Continue reading...

Early adopters share hair-raising videos of their Model S cars veering into traffic as new feature proves very betaTesla’s latest software update gave its Model S electric car the ability to drive itself with a new AutoPilot mode, but as a collection of owners have found out, two hands on the wheel are most definitely needed at all times.

The Linx IAS headband sensor monitors head trauma for American footballers and boxers, aiming to reduce the 300,000 concussions in US high-school sportsIn April this year, a US federal judge gave the final approval to a $900m class-action lawsuit settlement between the National Football League and thousands of former players.More than 5,000 retired players represented by the case complained that the league hid the risks of multiple concussions in order to keep players on the pitch. Each will now be awarded up to $5m (£3.23m) for any serious medical conditions associated with repeated head trauma. Continue reading...

From the first videogame, Intellivision Soccer, to a 3D rendering of Sergio Agüero’s head used in EA Sports’ Fifa 16, a new exhibition at the National Football Museum celebrates four decades of football gaming. Here are some of the highlights including Rio Ferdinand’s annoyance at his stats on Fifa 15 and a rejection letter to the producers of Football Manager from EA Sports.

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

New media streaming box is slick, supports ultra high definition content, can be voice operated and can come preset with your Amazon loginAmazon’s new Fire TV, the company’s 4K UHD-capable follow up to its successful streaming media box, beefs up specs but cuts a few small corners in the process.The Fire TV is a simple black box with shiny sides, a matt top and an embossed Amazon logo. It’s nonintrusive, can be hidden behind other devices and doesn’t have a fan, which makes it silent. Continue reading...

Proposed settlement means current and former Sony employees whose information was exposed in massive data leak will be paid from just a $2m fundThe Sony Pictures hack left thousands of employees vulnerable and scared, but when the dust settles on their class action lawsuit, the cash doled may not amount to much. Especially after the lawyers are paid.In a settlement proposed by the plaintiffs, Sony will pay between $5.5m and $8m to end the suit, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The “maximum base payment” against potential identity theft will be $1,050 cash for each class member (all current and former Sony employees whose information was exposed in the hack) out of a $2m cash fund. Anyone who has actually had their identity stolen as a result of the hack will be eligible for a $10,000 maximum. Continue reading...

Jeff Bezos owned newspaper’s writer backs The Gray Lady in row over article on working practices at online retailer … owned by Jeff BezosA sign of editorial independence at the Washington Post? The breaker of Watergate waded into the row between its rival the New York Times and online retailer Amazon with a piece which backed the venerable newspaper group on Monday.That’s the Washington Post owned by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Continue reading...

Walmart and Target hire about the same amount of holiday employees as last year, while Toys R Us and Kohl’s are hiring fewerAmazon plans to hire 100,000 people for the holidays, a 25% jump from last year that reveals a shift in the way we shop.Related: Stock market shrugs off exposé of Amazon work culture Continue reading...

Valve’s first PC-based consoles are to launch in November looking to compete with PlayStation and Xbox – here’s how it worksFor years, PC manufacturers have been desperate to get their machines into our living rooms. They’ve tried producing smaller sexier devices, aping the design sensibilities of dedicated games consoles and they’ve tried making them look functional and discreet like DVD players or set-top boxes. But largely, they have failed: most of us still keep our PCs on a desk, in a bedroom, study or office space.Then in 2013, after years of rumours and speculation, Valve, the company behind the dominant online PC gaming store Steam, announced that it was making a new bid for the living room with its own PC-based console, the Steam Machine. However, it wouldn’t manufacture the console itself, and there wouldn’t just be one version. Keeping to the open philosophy of the PC market, there would be multiple manufacturers, making their own versions, with different specifications. The uniting factor would be that every Steam Machine would run a Linux-based operating system named SteamOS, and that they’d all come with the dedicated Steam controller – an innovative combination of traditional console joypad and computer mouse, developed in-house by Valve. Continue reading...

Latest test caught on camera as company’s Project Wing morphs into new quadcopter drone shape for smooth package dropAmazon isn’t the only company working on drone delivery, Google’s Project Wing aims to beat the retailer to the punch with a drone that will fly five miles in five minutes.

Early reviewers praise cameras, fingerprint sensors and stock Android experience of Huawei and LG smartphonesGoogle’s latest flagship Android smartphones, the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, have been met with a warm welcome from early reviewers as they go on sale to the general public.The handsets, made by LG and Huawei respectively, were announced in late September. They are leading the rollout of the latest version of Google’s Android software, 6.0 Marshmallow. Continue reading...

Chief executive Tim Cook says ‘the runway here is really good’, with 8.5m more people still on free trial. But how many payers forgot to cancel?Apple Music has more than 6.5 million paying customers three weeks after its earliest adopters reached the end of their free trial of the music streaming service, according to chief executive Tim Cook.Talking at the WSJD Live conference in California, Cook indicated that another 8.5 million people are still in the service’s three-month trial period, giving it 15 million users overall. Continue reading...

Facebook says it is working on a fix after issues over battery consumption, but denies that constant location tracking is the causeFacebook’s iPhone app is consuming large amounts of battery charge even when it is not open, users have complained.Users say the app records long periods of background activity, even when settings such as background refresh are disabled. Continue reading...

The screenwriter of the Apple co-founder biopic defended claims that the film has taken too much dramatic licence at last night’s London film festival screeningAaron Sorkin has claimed his “conscience is clear” over the portrayal of Steve Jobs put forward in the new Oscar-tipped drama about the key moments in the Apple icon’s life.Related: Steve Jobs review: Fassbender excels but iWorship required if you're to care Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Monday – let’s talk about games to make it all better. Continue reading...

Solar cars compete in the 2015 World Solar Challenge race across Australia’s Northern Territory on Sunday. The competition, which has been held every two years since 1987, involves 46 cars from 25 countries, racing over 3,000km (1,864 mile) to the South Australian city of Adelaide. The first cars are expected to cross the finish line on Wednesday Continue reading...

Online retailer files lawsuit in US against people whose names it says it does not know, claiming they offer reviews for saleAmazon has started legal action against more than 1,000 unidentified people it claims provide fake reviews on the US version of its website.The online retailer said in the lawsuit, filed in the US on Friday, that its brand reputation was being tarnished by “false, misleading and inauthentic” reviews. Continue reading...

Where once we debated the merits of Mac and PC, now the struggle for dominance between smartphone operating systems leaves some users vulnerableThe novelist Umberto Eco wrote a deliciously insightful essay in 1994, in which he argued that the Apple Mac was a Catholic machine, in contrast to the PC, which, he argued, was clearly a Protestant device. How so? Simply this: the Mac freed its users/believers from the need to make decisions. All they had to do to find salvation was to follow the Apple Way. When the Mac was launched, for example, a vigorous debate broke out among user-interface geeks about whether a computer mouse should have one or two buttons. Some were critical of the fact that the Macintosh mouse had only one button. But when queried about this, Steve Jobs – then, as later, the supreme pontiff of the Church of Apple – was adamant and unrepentant. Two buttons would undermine the rationale of the Mac user interface. He spoke – as his Vatican counterpart still does – ex cathedra, and that was that.In contrast, Eco pointed out, the poor wretches who used a PC had, like the Calvinists of yore – to make their own salvation. For them, there was no One True Way. Instead they had to choose and install their own expansion cards and anti-virus software, wrestle with incompatible peripherals and so on. They were condemned to an endless round of decisions about matters that were incomprehensible to them but on which their computational happiness depended. Continue reading...

Thousands of van drivers recruited to ensure that the year’s predicted 860m parcels are delivered on time, as online buying continues to soarVan delivery drivers are gearing up for what is anticipated to be the biggest volume of parcels they have ever had to distribute, as shoppers hit their keyboards for a massive spending spree in the run-up to Christmas.In the final three months of the year, retailers are expected to send out a fifth more parcels than in the same period last year and this is expected to peak on the US-inspired discount day known as Black Friday. This year’s Black Friday – on 27 November – could be the UK’s first £1bn sales day, analysts predict, as more retailers and shoppers than ever become involved. Continue reading...

Gadgets that promise to make looking after our children easier are doing big business at Britain’s biggest baby showA sleepsuit that virtually fastens itself, a £1,200 buggy that transforms into a high chair at the flick of a switch and a Bluetooth bracelet that alerts you if your child moves more than 10 metres away. These are among the new products on offer to the 30,000 sleep-deprived parents expected at the country’s biggest ever Baby Show, in London’s Olympia, this week.The UK baby goods market is worth nearly £1bn a year, according to market research firm GfK. And the Baby Show, now in its 13th year, expects to take £6m in three days from a generation of parents who, in many cases, will be looking for a solution to their child-rearing problems through a quick fix of technology and cash. Continue reading...

Number of sightings of unauthorised drone flights this year expected to be nearly 1,100, and more than 1m drone sales predicted for next yearDrone users in the US will soon be required to register their aircraft with the Department of Transportation in an attempt to address safety concerns over the growing number of unauthorised flights.

‘It’s for cyclists who value the ability to pedal in a full skirt over the ability to pedal full gas’‘That, Helen Pidd, is the most beautiful bike I have ever seen,” said one of my colleagues, stroking the gleaming steed propped up by my desk as if it were a thoroughbred. (Newspaper people have a bad habit of referring to each other by their full bylines; grooming inanimate objects is a more niche perversion.) She was right: the Bobbin Brownie is a beaut. Mine was St Ives Green, a spearmint hue that managed to stand out while complementing pretty much every dress I own. It’s not a bicycle for hi-vis lovers or Lycra junkies. It’s for cyclists who value the ability to pedal in a full skirt over the ability to pedal full gas: exactly me on my two-mile commute into Manchester city centre.Bobbin is a British bike brand run by a husband-and-wife team who get their Dutch-style bikes made in Asia. They used to have a delightful shop in London, which they dubbed the world’s first bicycle boutique, but are online only these days. I would never normally recommend buying online. Not only could you get a donkey, but you will probably have to assemble the ass yourself: this, beware, is how brakes rub, gears stick and forks get put on the wrong way round. Continue reading...