Technology | The Guardian

Can’t tell your Big Boss from your Little John? Here’s our definitive guide to the whole Metal Gear seriesMetal Gear is arguably the greatest action gaming series ever created – but it is also easily the most bewildering. What is the difference between Liquid, Naked, and Solid Snake? What is Foxdie? And why is the US president involved? These are just some of the questions lurking within Hideo Kojima’s expansive, convoluted and often contrived gaming classics.So if you’ve been attracted to the series by the deliriously positive reviews of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, but are worried about not understanding anything that’s going on, here’s what you need to know. We’ve also ranked all the main titles for lasting quality – behind the latest title, of course, which we consider to be the very best.

As telecoms and TV customers interwine, rivals spend more on sporting rights and programmingWhen the group stages of the Champions League kick off next week, anyone turning to ITV to catch a game will be disappointed.This season’s top European club tournament (and its little brother, the Europa League) will only air on BT Sport after BT paid almost £900m for exclusive rights over three seasons, more than double the £400m Sky and ITV had paid for shared rights for the previous three years. Continue reading...

Parent Info website includes dictionary of abbreviations used by teenagers in chatrooms, many dealing with online sexual relationshipsParents concerned their children are “zerging” or giving away their ASL will be able to decode social media using a language guide launched by government.The dictionary translates abbreviations used by teenagers, including get naked on cam (GNOC) and age, sex, location (ASL) often used by children using anonymous chatrooms to disclose their personal details. Continue reading...

Yik Yak and Whatsgoodly give social media-saturated millennials a new way to openly share campus anecdotes. But with anonymity surfaces bullying and hateAs mobile phones and apps have become increasingly centralto one’s college experience in the past few years, a new type of app has emerged: the anonymous kind.In 2013 the app Yik Yak was created. And by 2014, it was being used at more than 1,000 colleges and universities worldwide, according to its founders Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington. Continue reading...

As advancing technology changes the face of employment in the 21st century, is the human workforce being made obsolete?Martin Ford is the founder of a Silicon Valley software firm and the author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future. Geoff Colvin is senior editor at large at Fortune magazine and author of Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will.Martin Ford To understand why today’s information technology could have a much more dramatic impact on employment than anything we’ve seen before, it’s best to begin by considering the nature of work performed by most of our population. The reality is that a very large fraction of our workforce is engaged in activities that are on some level routine, repetitive and predictable. This is not to say that most people have jobs that are rote-repetitive, but rather that most workers face the same types of challenge again and again and that most of their actions and decisions can be predicted, based on what they have done in the past. Continue reading...

A combination of power and endurance meant German cyclists excelled at this year’s Tour de France, but none were a match for BMW’s latest 5-Series TouringPrice £45,320

Alex Gibney says Laurene Powell agreed to help – then tried to dissuade potential interviewees from taking partFour years ago, the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs triggered a global expression of mourning of a depth and duration that Oscar-winning documentary-maker Alex Gibney found hard to explain.Were the people who gathered at candlelit vigils at Apple stores around the world grieving for Jobs, or the perceived loss of a future that seemed to promise an endless procession of gadgets and devices each more extraordinary and innovative than the last? Continue reading...

Should that nuclear waste dump really be next to a school? Well, how else are you going to fit that Office of Bureaucracy in?Every single time I’ve played Suburbia since its release in 2012, the same moment comes up. You’re weighing up some tile or other, wondering where or how to expand, when your eyes fall on your opponent’s suburb.“What on earth have you built?!” you ask, gazing at some new variety of miserabilist hellscape.

Third title in Disney’s ‘toys to life’ series comes with the added force of Star Wars – but fans of the original trilogy will have to be patientHaving worked through classic Disney and Pixar content in the first Infinity game, followed by Marvel adventures last year, the third title in this “toys to life” series now brings out the biggest franchise in Disney’s war chest: Star Wars.As with its predecessors, the new instalment offers a range of play-sets – self-contained mini-games which can be accessed by putting the correct toy on the base. Twilight of the Republic is included in the Starter Pack and offers a Clone Wars era adventure set between Episodes II and III where a droid factory on Geonosis has been mysteriously activated. Continue reading...

Apple’s latest launch event next week is unlikely to surprise – the real conundrum is how the company convinces people to keep on buying“Siri, give us a hint,” said Apple’s invitation to its media event next Wednesday. But few needed a hint to know that the chief executive, Tim Cook, will unveil new phones and iPhone software, plus a greatly improved Apple TV set-top box controlled via Siri, Apple’s voice-activated system.

Growth beats expectations, extending record run of rising sales to 42 months, with demand for hybrids and electric cars up by halfPoor weather in August might have dampened high street clothes sales but it seems to have triggered a stampede into car showrooms with a near-10% increase in monthly vehicle sales.The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said new car registrations rose by 9.6% year-on-year to 79,060 vehicles with the Ford Fiesta, Ford Focus and Volkswagen Golf models leading the way. Continue reading...

New collection launched at IFA trade show in Berlin shows improved designs that better mirror traditional watches rather than ‘geek-gear’Smartwatches are still a technology niche loved by a few early adopters, but considered ugly, expensive and pointless by the majority of people.

Daniel Verley, 26, arrested after drone crashed in Louis Armstrong stadium during Flavia Pennetta win over Monica NiculescuA teacher from New York has been arrested for allegedly crashing a drone into an empty section of seats at the US Open tennis tournament.Daniel Verley, 26, faces charges of reckless endangerment and operating a drone in a New York City public park outside of a prescribed area. Continue reading...

Screen time has become a battleground in family life. But could it be the key to getting more children reading?More kids than ever now have access to a tablet. The naysayers fear that too much screen-time has a detrimental affect on children's ability to concentrate on long-form reading. But is it truly a threat to their literacy? Or could inventive ebooks and reading apps actually encourage young people to take up reading and be a valuable counterpart to the book?Joining Olly Mann on the podcast this week are Peter Robinson, head of research at Dubit and Asi Sharabi who launched the children's storytelling start-up Lost My Name along with our guardian panel; Stuart Dredge from the tech desk, Julia Eccleshare, our children's books editor; and our games editor Keith Stuart. Continue reading...

Sales of cordless vacuum cleaners and humidifiers drive sales at British group, which spends £3m on research and development each weekDyson, the privately owned British engineering group famous for its vacuum cleaners and bladeless fans, has announced record-breaking profits of £367m, up 13% on the year, despite spending £3m a week on research and development.Max Conze, the company’s German-born chief executive, said Dyson’s ownership structure helps it keep its investment in new technology at high levels. Continue reading...

You might not have known you wanted a jacket with 15 pockets and a built-in neck pillow, but thanks to Hiral Sanghavi and his backers, you’ll soon get oneLong-distance love has paid off for the designers of a travel jacket that has now attracted a record $8m from would-be buyers on crowdfunding site Kickstarter.

PhantomAlert sues Google subsidiary Waze over allegations the map and traffic data company stole some of its databaseGoogle is facing a lawsuit over allegations that its Waze traffic app stole part of its database from a competing app called PhantomAlert.Acquired in 2013, Waze offers turn-by-turn driving directions, but it differs from Google’s own Maps app in its tight integration of crowd-sourced information for map and traffic data. Waze users can update the app in real-time to mark jams, speed cameras and road works, as well as add more detail to the map itself. Continue reading...

Company bets on the Hub with open protocols to securely connect to range of sensors and third-party smarthome accessories as it takes on Apple and GoogleSamsung has launched a new hub for smarthome devices, which it hopes will kickstart the evolution of the internet of things (IoT).Its Hub will securely unite sensors and accessories from a range of manufacturers using the SmartThings open system. Continue reading...

Mexican developers have released a new game in which players can hurl objects at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Trump is the frontrunner in the GOP’s race and has singled out Mexico and Latinos during his campaign, including calling for Mexico to pay for a wall on its US border to contain migration. In the game, Trumpealo, players can throw footballs, tequila bottles and cactuses at the US billionaire businessman

Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield says AI in the workplace ‘will be about making us more efficient rather than taking our jobs’Virtual assistants powered by artificial intelligence are a staple of popular culture, from HAL 9000 in the Space Odyssey series to Samantha in 2013 film Her.But these assistants are no longer science fiction. There’s Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google Now and the recently-unveiled Facebook M. Plus, there’s Slackbot, the “assistant, notepad and programmable bot” whose potential is one reason workplace communications startup Slack is valued at $2.8bn by investors. Continue reading...

Oral arguments begin next week as a court examines US officials’ ability to seize information abroad amid controversy over narcotics caseDoes cloud computing have a nationality? That’s the question posed by Microsoft’s lawyers and the counsel in a closely watched case whose oral arguments begin in Manhattan on next Wednesday. The case scrutinizes the ability of the US government to seize information outside its own borders.

As the technology corporation introduces its brand new logo to the world, we take a look at other tech brand reinventionsGoogle, the company now owned by Alphabet, (do keep up) has unveiled a new logo, replacing probably the best known tech branding in the world. The new logo, in a typeface cheekily (but accurately) titled “product sans” is thought to be cleaner and easier to read but also – crucially – quicker to load.This isn’t the first time Google has played around with its logo, previous changes include the time the company altered the kerning (positioning of the letters), shifting the “g” and “l” letters by a single pixel each (see below). Continue reading...

The road warrior provides a thrilling adventure, but the rust-ridden story can’t keep up with the chaseAs with many a long-running movie series, Mad Max films are built around a few recurring twists and turns. One of these devices is the theft of Max’s car, the baleful V8 Interceptor that facilitates his transformation from family man to roving desert avenger in the 1979 original. Reclaiming the vehicle and thus, Max’s feckless nomad lifestyle is a narrative crux in the sequels, with allies and antagonists basically serving as speed bumps.Avalanche’s videogame adaptation comes up with a smart variation on the theme, appropriate to the needs of an open-world game that, like fellow Warner Bros release Shadows of Mordor, borrows its spread of initially fogged-up map regions and stronghold infiltration missions from Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed series. Rather than rescuing his car, Max must build another, the Magnum Opus, using parts and scrap metal that are plucked from the wreckage of downed autos, the underbellies of dead towns and the hands of tribal fanatics. Continue reading...

Internet company’s share price dips after announcement that chief executive to take two weeks’ maternity leave in December to give birthYahoo shares have slipped after the company’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer, announced she is to take two weeks’ maternity leave to give birth to identical twin girls.In a post on her Tumblr blog, the 40-year-old, who already has one child, said the twins were due in December. Continue reading...

Rogue editors charged businesses and celebrities for Wikipedia entries and demanded ‘protection money’ to prevent changes onlineA Wikipedia scam in which small businesses have been charged “protection money” to safeguard pages about their organisations has prompted the online encyclopaedia to block 381 editor accounts.The Wikipedia Foundation said the accounts were blocked over “black hat” editing – charging money for the creation of promotional articles – amid allegations that hundreds of businesses and minor celebrities have been blackmailed by scammers posing as Wikipedia administrators.

Solid camera, screen, microSD card slot and 1.5-day battery life, mean this stock-Android smartphone gets the basics rightThe Motorola Moto X Play aims to be the phone that gets the basics right and packs a few high-end features, and still costs under £300 – but does it succeed?

ASA reprimands RockyFroggy, where users can play games to win prizes, after it ran an advertorial using a web domain similar to that of the BBCThe UK advertising watchdog has reprimanded a games website for using a fake BBC news article to try and attract players.RockyFroggy, a site where users can play games to win prizes, ran an advertorial using a web domain similar to that of the BBC and a style that mimicked the corporation’s news stories. Continue reading...

News Media Association calls on government to implement 10 changes to corporation’s objectives and governance in submission to green paperUK national and regional newspaper publishers have called for the BBC’s digital news operation to be curbed to allow commercial players to flourish at home and abroad.The News Media Association, the trade body for the UK newspaper industry, “fundamentally disagrees” with the corporation’s ambition to grow its online news services, according to its submission to the government green paper on the BBC charter review. Continue reading...

Federal judge’s ruling means sharing economy suit could cover more than 160,000 California drivers and increase plaintiffs’ leverageUber drivers are entitled to class action status in litigation over whether they are independent contractors or employees, a US judge said on Tuesday, in a ruling in a case that could have wide implications for the sharing economy.Three drivers sued Uber in a federal court in San Francisco, contending that they are employees and entitled to reimbursement for expenses, including gas and vehicle maintenance. The drivers currently pay those costs themselves. Continue reading...

Eatsa in the city’s financial district offers iPad-based ordering, with meals prepared by people whom customers never have to seeThose sick and tired of having to deal with their fellow humans all the time have a new respite – a fully automated restaurant in San Francisco.Customers at Eatsa in the Financial District will order from an iPad, sending the order to the kitchen. When the meal is ready, it appears in a small glass compartment. The food is prepared by real people, but the patrons never have to see them. Continue reading...

Search giant says the new design will soon be seen across all its products just a month after a major restructuring of the company gave rise to AlphabetFirst they changed their name, now they’ve changed their logo. Google introduced a new sans-serif and slightly toned-down four-colour logo on Tuesday in the biggest redesign since 1999.Related: Google's new logo is motivated by design austerity, not legibility Continue reading...

Thousands are said to have subscribed to the infidelity website in the last week, suggesting the recent leak of client information proved little deterrent for those keen to cheat on their spouses

In 2010 email, Blair seeks meeting between US secretary of state and Sheikh Tamim ‘to discuss potential partnership issues’New emails released from Hillary Clinton’s private account show that Cherie Blair lobbied the US secretary of state on behalf of the crown prince of Qatar, writing: “As you know I have good links to the Qataris.”In a 2010 email marked confidential, Blair sought to arrange a meeting between Clinton and Qatar’s young crown prince, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani. Continue reading...

Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain is finally out so, to celebrate, here’s a furtive glance back at our favourite sneak-n-shoot adventuresAfter years in development, a fascinating prelude and some interesting marketing decisions, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was finally released Tuesday. Following grizzled hero Big Boss on his journey into war-torn Afghanistan, the latest title in the series is looking like another epic, bewildering and brilliant stealth adventure.Metal Gear Solid, of course, popularised the stealth concept in 1998, introducing millions of gamers to the basic conventions of this then formative genre. You need a protagonist who relies more on watching and avoiding enemies than shooting them; you need an artificial intelligence system that gives baddies predictable patrol behaviours but also lets them see and hear the hero; and you need an environment that allows players to hide. A lot. Continue reading...

Cyber-attackers launch Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) violation on law enforcement agency in apparent revenge for previous arrestsCyber-attackers have taken down the website of the National Crime Agency (NCA) in apparent revenge for arrests made last week.The NCA website was temporarily down on Tuesday morning, four days after six teenagers were released on bail on suspicion of using hacking group Lizard Squad’s cyberattack tool to target websites and services. Continue reading...

Preliminary findings of three year old probe submitted to country’s competition commission includes allegations of illegal self-promotion

Shaun Bridges, a former secret service member, pleads guilty to money laundering after another member of same task force admitted to similar crimesA former US secret service agent has pleaded guilty to stealing over $800,000 worth of bitcoin during an investigation into online drug marketplace Silk Road.

But rapper’s manager hits back, saying Apple Music contract was not the cause, and slams Jay-Z’s streaming service for ‘publicity stunt’Digital music service Tidal has accused Apple of blocking it from streaming video of a charity-festival set by rapper Drake, but the star’s manager has retaliated by accusing the service of a “publicity stunt”.Drake played a mini-set at the Lil WeezyAna festival in New Orleans over the weekend, with the event streamed live by Tidal for its subscribers. While Drake was on stage, the stream was cut, with Tidal blaming Apple. Continue reading...

The anime series makes a well-designed transition to the 3DS, but Zombi’s journey from the Wii U to other platforms results in a bloodless experienceFollowing the popular anime series and toy line LBX: Little Battlers eXperience is a miniature robot-building and fighting game, with a focus on exploration and customisation that offers 130 basic robots with over 4,000 parts that can be fitted. In 2046, 13-year-old Van Yamano battles to protect his robot, Achilles, through a campaign that is supplemented with arena battles in 20 locations. Yamano can also take part in team battles via local multiplayer three-on-three rounds – provided each battler has a 3DS and copy of the game. Continue reading...

In Geek Heresy, computer expert Kentaro Toyama warns against our over-reliance on technology and explains why people, not smart tools, are the key to social changeWhen Microsoft programmer Kentaro Toyama was sent by his employers to India in 2004, charged with using technology to improve education, he expected to swoop in armed with gadgets and effect whizzy social change. It didn’t quite pan out like that. Toyama had some early successes at Microsoft Research India, including the invention of a device that allowed multiple mice-wielding pupils to control one computer at the same time. (MultiPoint, a problem-fixer for classrooms that had too few computers, won awards.) But he quickly came to see that technology was not the “magic cure” export his employers – and, indeed, many in Silicon Valley – seemed to expect.In his new book, Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology, he writes that this was “hard to take. I was a computer scientist, a Microsoft employee, and the head of a group that aimed to find digital solutions for the developing world. I wanted nothing more than to see innovation triumph… But exactly where the need was greatest, technology seemed unable to make a difference.” He worked in schools that had been given computers but had no tech support, the broken-down hardware quickly ending up stacked in cupboards. He watched teachers struggle to cope with screen-enthused kids, for whom “a computer was less a help, more hindrance”. Continue reading...

When Anita Sarkeesian launched a YouTube series on misogyny in video games, she received death threats and was forced into hiding. A year on from GamerGate, she explains why a global ‘temper tantrum’ won’t make her quitAnita Sarkeesian doesn’t give me the address of her San Francisco apartment over email. Instead, she texts it to me a few hours before we’re set to meet. After thousands of rape and death threats, a bomb scare and an email promising a mass shooting at one of her speaking events, a woman can’t be too careful.Sarkeesian, media critic and executive director of the nonprofit and video web series Feminist Frequency, has spent the past few years of her life at the centre of a firestorm in the gaming community – one that brings together misogyny, technology and a cultural shift in an industry so huge it now outperforms Hollywood. In videos that discuss misogyny in video games and widespread tropes that diminish women, Sarkeesian – named one of the 100 most influential people of 2015 by Time magazine – talks to the camera, with a commentary that runs the gamut from feminist theory to historical analysis. Her videos are smart, incisive and much needed in an industry in which women are often treated as little more than background decoration or damsels in distress. Continue reading...

IndyCar’s Marco Andretti drove Justin Wilson’s No25 car across the Golden Gate Bridge on Thursday, leading a motorcade to honour the late driver. Wilson died on Monday, a day after a piece of debris from another car struck him on the head at Pocono Raceway Continue reading...

Suspects arrested under suspicion of launching denial of service attacks on newspapers, schools, retailers and games companies using Lizard StresserSix teenagers have been released on bail on suspicion of using hacking group Lizard Squad’s cyberattack tool to target websites and services.The six suspects are accused of launching cyber attacks at a national newspaper, a school, gaming companies and a number of online retailers Continue reading...

New managing director for Europe points to petition website’s successes and asks what the ‘chatterati’ are doing beyond whingeing about problemsClicktivism – using the internet to take direct action to achieve a political or social aim – could be one of the only ways we have left to change the world, a senior boss at Change.org has said.Simon Willis, the online petition site’s new British managing director for Europe, said the cynical “dinner party chatterati” sniffed at online petitions as the campaign style of the chronically lazy or the baying mob.

In this punishingly vacuous thriller, Rupert Friend is a rabbit-faced assassin with dozens of expendable types on his hitlistBased on the video game, this actually resembles a uniquely boring, feature-length Audi commercial, incidentally intent on pinching ideas from the first two Terminators. It’s a punishingly vacuous shoot-’em-up-and-grind-’em-down-with-dullness thriller featuring Rupert Friend as the notorious rabbit-faced assassin, his face set in a thin-lipped expression of supposedly chilling impassivity that makes you think he should be nibbling lettuce. Continue reading...

Research claims that 10-15% of iOS and Android ‘top-performing’ games reach $1m in revenues, but only 20% of those go on to reach $10mAngry Birds maker Rovio’s decision to lay off 38% of its staff is the latest reminder that the mobile games industry can be a brutally unforgiving industry, even if the £865m spent by players on Candy Crush Saga in 2014 shows that the rewards for success can be huge.Now new research from mobile analytics firm App Annie has shed more light on the path to success for successful mobile games, including the claim that while their downloads tend to peak soon after launch, their revenues peak much later. Continue reading...

Users call for autoplay to be opt-in only, after being forced to unwittingly watch gunman’s video of murder due to social media companies’ default settingsThe murder of a TV reporter and her cameraman live on television was shocking. What made it all the more real for many was being forced to unwittingly witness the murder through videos made by the killer posted to Twitter and Facebook, which automatically played within their social media feeds.

Tomatina festivalgoers wreck vehicle sent in to film pitched battle between juice-drenched fruit flingers, breaking windows, mirrors and camerasWhen Google sent a Street View car into the Tomatina festival the plan was to capture “the magic and colour” of the messy event from all angles, but instead it ended up with footage of tomato-drenched revellers trashing the car.