Technology | The Guardian

Chic hi-tech Android flip phone has better cameras and longer battery life, losing none of its noveltySamsung’s hi-tech flip phone has been a bit of a hit over the past year. Now the Z Flip is back for 2022, with better cameras, a faster chip, longer battery life and more customisation options than ever, as the company attempts to appeal to those bored of flat phones and looking for something more exciting.You still have to pay a pretty penny for that cutting-edge appeal. The Galaxy Z Flip 4 costs £999 ($999/A$1,499), which is roughly in line with what you would pay for a premium standard phone, but it is likely to be frequently found at a discount.Main screen: 6.7in FHD+ 120Hz AMOLED Infinity Flex Display (425ppi)Cover screen: 1.9in AMOLED (302ppi)Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1RAM: 8GB of RAMStorage: 128, 256 or 512GBOperating system: One UI 4.1.1 based on Android 12Camera: dual 12MP rear, 10MP front-facingConnectivity: 5G, nano sim + esim, wifi6, NFC, Bluetooth 5.2 and GNSSWater resistance: IPX8 (1.5-metre depths for 30 minutes)Folded dimensions: 84.9 x 71.9 x 17.1 to 15.9mmUnfolded dimensions: 165.2 x 72.2 x 6.9mmWeight: 187g Continue reading...

The mechanics of the internet mean that blocks on access imposed by one country can be felt half a world away

A long and detailed complaint about lax practices by the social media firm’s former security chief must be music to Elon Musk’s ears“Ex-Twitter exec blows the whistle, alleging reckless and negligent cybersecurity policies,” said the CNN headline. My initial reaction? Yawn… so what’s new: a social media company playing fast and loose with its users’ data? And who’s this whistleblower, anyway? A guy called Peiter Zatko. Never heard of him. Probably another tech bro who’s discovered his conscience…But what’s this? He has a nickname – “Mudge”. (Cue audio of pennies dropping.) The mainstream media calls him a “hacker”, which is their usual way of undermining a gifted software expert. Which this Mudge certainly is. In fact, in that line of business, he has blue-chip status. He was the highest-profile member of a famous hacker thinktank, the L0pht (pronounced “loft”) and a member of the well-known cooperative Cult of the Dead Cow. In that sense, he was a pioneer of “hacktivism” who has spent much of his life trying to educate the world on cybersecurity and has a long list of discovered vulnerabilities to his credit. Continue reading...

Digital parking has spread rapidly across Britain, but campaigners say it is stressful or inaccessible for manyAll summer, exasperated motorists have been jabbing at their phones, trying to download and install yet another parking app. Then follows the interminable chore of entering card details and number plate, which may ultimately be derailed by poor phone signal or a glitchy app.Anti-ageism campaigners say navigating the process can be overwhelming for some older people who, in the words of the veteran consumer champion Dame Esther Rantzen, risk being “imprisoned at home”. Continue reading...

One of the world’s biggest e-commerce companies is known for rock-bottom prices – and allegedly brutal conditionsAmericans addicted to Amazon could soon be wooed by a Chinese tech giant most of them have never heard of. Pinduoduo is planning to expand its reach to the US next month, according to reports in Bloomberg and Reuters. The company is known for delivering goods at rock-bottom prices – while putting its employees through conditions that a prominent labor activist says should horrify Americans.Described by its founder, the former Google employee Colin Huang, as a cross between “Costco and Disneyland”, Pinduoduo has ridden a wave of meteoric Chinese tech growth to become one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world since its founding in 2015. Continue reading...

Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko says company deceived users, board members and federal government about strength of its security measuresTwitter’s former head of security has accused the company of “extreme, egregious deficiencies” in its handling of user information and spam bots in a scathing whistleblower complaint.Peiter Zatko, a veteran hacker and security expert known as “Mudge”, says the company has deceived users, board members and the federal government about the strength of its security measures. Zatko was hired in 2020 by the Twitter co-founder and then CEO Jack Dorsey to strengthen the company’s security after a mass hack targeted 130 high-profile Twitter accounts. Continue reading...

Vicky Littler and Anthony Weir respond to articles in the Guardian series Swipe right: the decade that changed datingLike Gatsby’s endless examination of Daisy’s green light across the bay, the singleton’s incessant search for “ideal” remains always out of reach (I’m a dating app evangelist – but even I’m not on Tinder any more, 15 August; Dating apps have made our love lives hell. Why do we keep using them?, 16 August).The promise exceeds what reality will deliver: the facade of beauty, wit and chemistry conjured through our screens belies doctored images, unrepentant creeps and bores. The collective romantic subconscious, carefully curated by Disney and Richard Curtis, cannot survive its collision with reality. Continue reading...

Restore law to Gotham, explore medieval Bavaria or skateboard like a pro… it’s all to play for in these new titlesNintendo’s brilliantly fun and untouchably cool take on the shooting game involves kids who can transform into squids and octopuses to swim through lakes of paint, splattering the level (and the opposing team) with colour to clinch victory.

This summer, a forthcoming Street Fighter game was revealed with a striking new look. Its developers explain how they’re trying to make a beat ‘em up that everyone can playIf there’s one name synonymous with fighting games, it’s Street Fighter. Dominating arcades in the late 80s and 90s and spawning the living room-conquering Super Nintendo classic Street Fighter II, Capcom’s beat ’em up became a cultural phenomenon. But since the death of the arcade, fighting games have become more niche. While 2016’s Street Fighter V slowly became a competitive esports sensation, it lacked the earlier games’ universal appeal. Now, 31 years after Street Fighter II, Capcom is reinventing its prize fighter for a new generation. Visually, Street Fighter 6 is forging a new identity for the franchise, sporting an eye-catching aesthetic that combines unattainably bulging biceps with attacks that explode in a burst of colour.“I really want to make Street Fighter a game that everyone can play, like it used to be,” producer and series veteran Shuhei Matsumoto tells the Guardian. Offering a radical overhaul to its controls, Street Fighter 6 is a more accessible twist on spin-kicking, fireball-throwing fighting spectacle. A newbie-friendly control option ditches the classic six-button setup of high and low punches and kicks in favour of a simpler three-button structure, allowing first-timers to pull off a Shoryuken without spending months developing the muscle memory. Continue reading...

Experts say case highlights dangers of automated detection of child sexual abuse imagesGoogle has refused to reinstate a man’s account after it wrongly flagged medical images he took of his son’s groin as child sexual abuse material (CSAM), the New York Times first reported. Experts say it’s an inevitable pitfall of trying to apply a technological solution to a societal problem.Experts have long warned about the limitations of automated child sexual abuse image detection systems, particularly as companies face regulatory and public pressure to help address the existence of sexual abuse material. Continue reading...

Tesla CEO’s attempt to back out of acquisition of social media company heads for trial in Delaware on 17 OctoberElon Musk has subpoenaed his friend and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as part of an effort to back out of his $44bn agreement to acquire the social media platform.The subpoena was revealed in a court document on Monday. Continue reading...

UK home secretary hits out at Facebook’s owner over move that could hinder child abuse investigationsPriti Patel has hit out at Facebook’s plans to encrypt direct messages, even as the company is facing criticism in the US for failing to protect the privacy of women seeking abortions.The UK home secretary has urged Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, as well as WhatsApp, to give up on its intentions to apply “end-to-end encryption” to direct messages sent from Messenger and Instagram. Continue reading...

Technology should not be used as it is unproven for such high-stakes elections, one security specialist says

Group responds to CEO’s memo calling for ‘in-person collaboration’ at least three days a weekApple employees have hit back at the tech company’s return-to-office orders, and launched a petition saying the firm risked stifling diversity and staff wellbeing by restricting their ability to work remotely.The petition is in response to an all-employee memo from the Apple chief executive, Tim Cook, who last week said workers would have to come into the office for at least three days a week from September, including Tuesdays, Thursdays and a third day to be determined by individual teams. Continue reading...

Supremely comfortable, feature-packed Bluetooth cans sound brilliant with 60-hour battery lifeThe fourth-generation of the Momentum Bluetooth headphones from the renowned German audio manufacturer Sennheiser are a wholesale redesign, ditching their previous retro styling for something simpler and much more comfortable. All this with 60-hours of battery life.Undeniably pricey at £299 ($349.99/A$549.99), the Momentum 4 Wireless are still £50 cheaper than their predecessors and undercut key competitors from Sony, Bose and Apple. Continue reading...

CEO Shalev Hulio is stepping down as part of NSO reorganisation that will see it focus on sales in Nato member countriesIsrael’s NSO Group, which makes the globally controversial Pegasus spyware said on Sunday its CEO Shalev Hulio would step down as part of a reorganisation.The indebted, privately owned company also said it would focus sales on countries belonging to the Nato alliance. Continue reading...

Scammers are using manipulated video and audio to dupe employees into handing over money. But protection is possibleIs that really Tom Cruise about to wrestle an alligator? Keanu Reeves dancing like nobody is watching? Or Robert Pattinson getting shade from his cat? No – it’s a deepfake.Deepfake technology is advanced artificial intelligence that replaces actual video and audio with video and audio that was artificially created from other sources. While it may look like harmless fun on TikTok, it’s also becoming a huge security risk for businesses of all sizes. Continue reading...

Even the latest iPhone scare won’t persuade us to choose safety over convenienceApple caused a stir a few weeks ago when it announced that the forthcoming update of its mobile and laptop operating systems would contain an optional high-security mode that would provide users with an unprecedented level of protection against powerful “spyware” software that surreptitiously obtains control of their devices.It’s called Lockdown Mode and, according to Apple, “offers an extreme, optional level of security for the very few users who, because of who they are or what they do, may be personally targeted by some of the most sophisticated digital threats, such as those from NSO Group and other private companies developing state-sponsored mercenary spyware”. Continue reading...

Donald Trump welcomed the conspiracy at the White House. Its followers stormed Congress. Big Tech still seems not to care. Mike Rothschild’s book should sound the alarm for us allWhat is it that has hypnotized so many addled souls who devote themselves to decoding the Delphic clues of the QAnon conspiracy?What they think they’re getting is “secret knowledge”, from “Q” and a bunch of other military insiders working for Donald Trump, about “the storm … a ringside seat to the final match” in a “secret war between good and evil” that will end with the slaughter of all “enemies of freedom”. Continue reading...

Biobank urged to review transfer of information for medical researchRising political and security tensions between Beijing and the west have prompted calls for a review of the transfer of genetic data to China from a biomedical database containing the DNA of half a million UK citizens.The UK Biobank said it had about 300 projects under which researchers in China were accessing “detailed genetic information” or other health data on volunteers. Continue reading...

Artificial intelligence is being used to design magazine covers and provide pictures for internet newsletters. What could possibly go wrong?It all started with the headline over an entry in Charlie Warzel’s Galaxy Brain newsletter in the Atlantic: “Where Does Alex Jones Go From Here?” This is an interesting question because Jones is an internet troll so extreme that he makes Donald Trump look like Spinoza. For many years, he has parlayed a radio talkshow and a website into a comfortable multimillion-dollar business peddling nonsense, conspiracy theories, falsehoods and weird merchandise to a huge tribe of adherents. And until 4 August he had got away with it. On that day, though, he lost an epic defamation case brought against him by parents of children who died in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre – a tragedy that he had consistently ridiculed as a staged hoax; a Texas jury decided that he should pay nearly $50m in damages for publishing this sadistic nonsense.Warzel’s newsletter consisted of an interview with someone who had worked for the Jones media empire in its heyday and, as such, was interesting. But what really caught my eye was the striking illustration that headed the piece. It showed a cartoonish image of a dishevelled Jones in some kind of cavern surrounded by papers, banknotes, prescriptions and other kinds of documents. Rather good, I thought, and then inspected the caption to see who the artist was. The answer: “AI art by Midjourney”. Continue reading...

The WeWork co-founder is reportedly at the helm of Flow, a new company looking to reinvent apartment living – but have any lessons been learned?Adam Neumann presided over one of the most spectacular business collapses in recent history. A New Age-spouting, barefoot business messiah, he managed to build and burn his last startup, the office-sharing company WeWork, in such spectacular fashion that even Hollywood paid attention.And now he is back – on a quest to become America’s biggest landlord. Continue reading...

Ghanem Almasarir’s victory opens way for other hacking victims in UK to bring cases against foreign governmentsA British judge has ruled that a case against the kingdom of Saudi Arabia brought by a dissident satirist who was targeted with spyware can proceed, a decision that has been hailed as precedent-setting and one that could allow other hacking victims in Britain to sue foreign governments who order such attacks.The case against Saudi Arabia was brought by Ghanem Almasarir, a prominent satirist granted asylum in the UK, who is a frequent critic of the Saudi royal family. Continue reading...

Content written to appear high up on web search results will be targeted with new changes, the company saysGoogle is tweaking its search results in an effort to prioritise “content by people, for people” and fight back against the scourge of clickbait, the company says.“We know people don’t find content helpful if it seems like it was designed to attract clicks rather than inform readers,” Danny Sullivan, from Google, said in a blog post. “Many of us have experienced the frustration of visiting a webpage that seems like it has what we’re looking for, but doesn’t live up to our expectations. The content might not have the insights you want, or it may not even seem like it was created for, or even by, a person.” Continue reading...

From pictures of puppies to deadly political manoeuvres, WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging platform. But is it losing its appeal?Every morning before she leaves for work, Rosie, a 28-year-old physiotherapist, chats with her three housemates. Sometimes they commiserate or celebrate over the weather or football results; sometimes one of them has good news about a job interview to share or lets off steam about their latest dating app disaster.The friends moved out of the house they shared in Bristol last summer when they left college, and they live in different towns now, but their WhatsApp group, named after the road they lived on together, starts pinging with messages around 7.30am most days. “I live on my own now, and I miss having company,” says Rosie. “Some of the others have moved back in with their parents, which has its own challenges. We make each other laugh and keep each other sane. We don’t get to meet up much, but the group chat has kept our little gang alive.” Continue reading...

One of the minds behind deeply unsettling sci-fi classic Dead Space imagines another haunted, forsaken space station in this forthcoming horror gameAn unnamed convict staggers through a lunar prison that’s been sundered by some sort of galactic catastrophe. The steely corridors are shrouded in darkness, save for the neon glow of computer terminals. Every step is tentative, because pulsating monstrosities – other prisoners, mutated into abominable forms – threaten to emerge from every crevice.Few versions of hell loom larger in the imagination than the haunted, derelict space station. You’re alone in the dark, far from home, and stalked by whatever horrors have leaked in from the cosmic void. Steve Papoutsis has been obsessed with this bleak fantasy for years: he worked as a producer on the vaunted Dead Space series, which condemned gamers to their own forsaken Nostromo. The Callisto Protocol, which arrives on consoles and PC later this year, is pitched as a spiritual successor to that franchise. Papoutsis is at the helm once again, and wants to show us just how terrifying the final frontier can be. Continue reading...

The email subscription platform has been a source of inspiration and financial freedom for Pitchfork favourites struggling in the streaming economy“I jumped from my chair and knelt over my father, cradling his head. As if in a movie, I held his head in one hand and snapped the other in front of his face, yelling for him to wake up,” writes singer-songwriter Kevin Morby in a recent post on his Substack newsletter, recounting a night his father had a medical scare. “Thankfully, moments later, his eyes, like cherries in a slot machine, quickly dinged forward and he looked around the room without moving his head.”Morby loves his Substack. The Kansas City-based musician, who is adored by Pitchfork and recently released his seventh album, This Is a Photograph, joined the email newsletter platform in April at his manager’s suggestion. He now sends his several hundred subscribers a series of rambling, poetic vignettes every few weeks. Continue reading...

Users of iPhone, iPad and Mac advised to update software to secure them against vulnerabilityApple users have been advised to immediately update their iPhones, iPads and Macs to protect against a pair of security vulnerabilities that can allow attackers to take complete control of their devices.In both cases, Apple said, there are credible reports that hackers are already abusing the vulnerabilities to attack users. Continue reading...

The petition by Alphabet Workers Union outlines measures to safeguard employee and user data in light of abortion prosecutionMore than 650 Google workers have signed on to a petition lobbying the tech behemoth to adopt policies that could protect and provide support for employees and consumers seeking abortion care.The demands were threefold: workers asked that the company extend access to reproductive healthcare benefits already offered to full-time employees to temporary and contract workers; second, the company stop any and all political lobbying of politicians or organizations “because these politicians were responsible for appointing the supreme court justices who overturned Roe v Wade and continue to infringe on other human rights issues”. Last, they demanded Google stop storing health-related data that could later be used to criminalize users and address the disinformation and misinformation found in search results. Continue reading...

The Melbourne international film festival installation transports viewers to the Daintree Rainforest. Its creators share how they built an entire ecosystem

Memo from boss Tim Cook backs down from earlier attempt to get all employees in on same three fixed daysApple has told its employees they must come in to the office for at least three days a week from next month, in an effort to restore “in-person collaboration”.In a memo to all employees, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said the policy would require all staff to return to the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as a third day that would vary team by team. Continue reading...

After she was dropped by her agent, Alex Aster turned to a books-obsessed corner of TikTok to gauge interest in her YA novel … and now Lightlark is one of the most eagerly anticipated releases of the yearHaving finally published her first novel, Alex Aster was feeling disheartened. The book had tanked during the pandemic and she had been dropped by her literary agent. Then, on 13 March 2021, she decided to take to TikTok, asking her followers if they would: “read a book about a cursed island that only appears once every 100 years to host a game that gives the six rulers of the realm a chance to break their curses.” One of the rulers must die, the short video revealed, “even as love complicates everything” for the heroine, Isla Crown.Aster didn’t expect much, especially when she checked in a few hours later to see that her post had only clocked up about 1,000 views. Maybe the books world was right, she thought. Maybe there wasn’t a market for Lightlark, a young adult story she had been writing and rewriting for years, to no interest from publishers. The next day, however, she woke up to see her video had been viewed more than a million times. A week later, Lightlark had gone to auction and she had a six-figure deal with Amulet Books. Last month, Universal preemptively bought the film rights for, in her words, “more zeros than I’ve seen in my life”. Continue reading...

Firm increased business expenses in 2021 after former chancellor introduced 130% ‘super-deduction’ relief schemeAmazon could be off the hook for tax in the UK for at least two more years after benefiting from reliefs brought in by Rishi Sunak during the pandemic, a report suggests.The research from the Fair Tax Foundation indicates that the US tech company claimed more than £800m in capital allowances – business expenses that can be offset against profits – in 2021, £500m more than in 2020. Continue reading...

Guardian Australia picture editor Carly Earl explains the dos and don’ts of photographing the celestial spectacle, the last super moon of of 2022

It started with blocky players and electronic crowd noise, now it boasts intelligent animation and specific movement capture for the women’s gameEarlier this year, at the famed La Romareda stadium in Zaragoza, Spain, EA Sports organised two football matches, one each for male and female pro players. During these competitive 90-minute fixtures, all participants, including subs and officials, wore advanced Xsens motion capture suits that recorded their every movement, shot, tackle and celebration. Involving more than 70 people it was, according to gameplay producer Sam Rivera, the largest number of players ever motion-captured in a single session.Every year, the developers of Fifa tell us that their key aim is authenticity. This year, Fifa 23 – the final product of EA Sports and Fifa’s 30-year partnership – is about making key moments more intelligible, detailed and dramatic, zooming in ever closer to the action at pitch level. That grand Zaragoza mo-cap session provided 10m frames of animation – twice as much match capture as Fifa 22 – allowing for more than 6,000 authentic player animations, a wealth of which are female-specific. Continue reading...

Saudi official Bader al-Asaker accused by US of recruiting employees to secretly report on dissidents’ anonymous accountsTwitter has allowed a senior Saudi official and aide to Mohammed bin Salman to maintain a verified account with more than 2m followers despite allegations that the official recruited and paid Twitter employees to secretly report on dissidents’ anonymous accounts.A US jury on Tuesday convicted one of the former Twitter employees, a US-Lebanese national named Ahmad Abouammo on charges that he used his position at the social media company to spy on Twitter users on behalf of the Saudi government. Two other named defendants, Saudi citizens Ali Alzabarah and Ahmed Almutairi, are on the FBI’s wanted list and are believed to be in Saudi Arabia. Both are accused of acting as unregistered agents of Saudi Arabia. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: The BBC’s Kayley Thomas pieces together the Argentinian striker’s final hours in Transfer: The Emiliano Sala Story. Plus: five of the best podcasts about childhood memories

The company has offered only a 35p rise, and hundreds of workers stopped work last week in protestThe GMB union has submitted formal pay claims to Amazon seeking a minimum of £15 an hour for workers at its UK warehouses as unofficial protests continue to dog the online retailer.Hundreds of workers in warehouses across the country, including Tilbury in Essex, Dartford in Kent, Belvedere in south-east London, Coventry, Avonmouth, near Bristol and Rugeley in Staffordshire, stopped work last week after Amazon offered workers a 35p an hour pay rise – equivalent to about 3% compared with the June inflation rate of 9.4%. Continue reading...

App spares users the embarrassment of a blanket notification as part of series of updates over coming monthWhatsApp users will soon be able to avoid social awkwardness by gracefully – and silently – leaving annoying groups, the company has announced.Currently, if you leave a WhatsApp group, every member is notified, which can be embarrassing for smaller groups and irritating for larger ones. Continue reading...

US treasury says popular cryptocurrency service reportedly laundered more than $7bn worth of virtual currencyThe United States on Monday imposed sanctions on Tornado Cash, a popular cryptocurrency service that allows users to mask their transactions, accusing it of helping hackers, including from North Korea, to launder proceeds from their cybercrimes.A senior treasury department official said Tornado Cash, one of the largest virtual currency “mixers” identified as problematic by the treasury, has reportedly laundered more than $7bn worth of virtual currency since it was created in 2019. Continue reading...

Lightning-quick recharging could be game-changing for cut-price Android with top performanceOnePlus is back with another mid-cycle upgrade to its top Android phone – this time with the lightning-fast-charging 10T handset, which can fully power up in under 20 minutes without destroying its battery life.After a two-year hiatus, the “T” series of phones is back to debut new technology halfway through the year, this time with 150W charging – more than five times the power of Apple’s top iPhone.Screen: 6.5in 120Hz FHD+ OLED (393ppi)Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1RAM: 8 or 16GB of RAMStorage: 128 or 256GBOperating system: OxygenOS 12.1 (Android 12)Camera: 50MP main, 8MP ultrawide, 2MP macro; 16MP selfieConnectivity: 5G, eSIM, wifi 6, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3 and GNSSWater resistance: NoneDimensions: 163 × 75.4 × 8.8mmWeight: 203.5g Continue reading...

We had more than 2,500 followers, then suddenly the page was disabled and we have no idea whyI was setting up a community cooking school when the pandemic struck, and during the crisis we used our kitchens to run a surplus food project instead. It was used by thousands of people, and Facebook played a vital role in our success.I’m back working on the original plan for the social enterprise but this week we suffered a big blow as I discovered my personal Facebook page, and the page for the cooking school, had been disabled. Continue reading...

Nikkei says firm wants components bound for mainland to now comply with longstanding Beijing ruleApple has reportedly asked Taiwan-based suppliers to label their products as being produced in China, in an effort to avoid disruption from strict Chinese customs inspections resulting from the visit of the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to Taipei.According to Nikkei, the company has asked manufacturers on the island to label components bound for mainland China as made in “Chinese Taipei” or “Taiwan, China”. The labels are required in order to comply with a longstanding but previously unenforced rule that requires imported goods to suggest the island is part of the People’s Republic of China. Continue reading...

‘Black-box’ AI-based discrimination seems to be beyond the control of organisations that use itIt started with a single tweet in November 2019. David Heinemeier Hansson, a high-profile tech entrepreneur, lashed out at Apple’s newly launched credit card, calling it “sexist” for offering his wife a credit limit 20 times lower than his own.The allegations spread like wildfire, with Hansson stressing that artificial intelligence – now widely used to make lending decisions – was to blame. “It does not matter what the intent of individual Apple reps are, it matters what THE ALGORITHM they’ve placed their complete faith in does. And what it does is discriminate. This is fucked up.” Continue reading...

Observer investigation reveals how the ex-kickboxer and Big Brother contestant from Luton has gone from obscurity to global internet fame in months

Ex-leader Iain Duncan Smith urges ministers to cut ties with Chinese-owned platform over data fearsDowning Street and senior ministers have been urged to follow parliament in shutting down their TikTok accounts over concerns about the app’s connection with China and rising tensions over Taiwan.After a successful lobbying campaign by Conservative MPs, the Speakers of the House of Commons and Lords ordered officials to close down the @ukparliament account, saying they had not been consulted about its creation and had been made aware of reasons for concern. Continue reading...

Featuring an astronaut trapped on a space station with only his alternate selves for company, 11 Bit Studios’ next game walks the line between comedy and commentaryA sci-fi management sim from the team behind climate crisis fable Frostpunk, The Alters turns the classic video game concept of the “extra life” into a source of manpower. Protagonist(s) Jan Dolski is the sole survivor of a crash-landed mining mission, trapped on an airless planet in a mobile base that resembles an East End boxpark strung to the inside of the London Eye. To run the facility, Dolski must spawn and collaborate with alternate versions of himself. These aren’t just doppelgangers, but independent characters with diverging personalities and skills (and haircuts) born of different life choices: one is a dreamy guitar player, another seems to have anger issues, a third is the boffin type, a fourth carries himself like Captain Kirk.Teamwork is crucial, but despite – or perhaps, thanks to – being genetically identical, Jan’s parallel selves may not get along. “[Their] paths branch at different stages or certain ages, defining their personality and – most importantly – identity,” says director Tomasz Kisilewicz. “The result is a different being that is annoyed by [different] things and driven by different motivations. Understanding them correctly is key to success in the game.” Mismanaging Dolski’s selves may lead to outright conflict; Kisilewicz declines to go into detail, but it’s certainly possible for them to die.The Alters will debut on PC; release date to be confirmed. Continue reading...

News of Renate Nyborg’s exit came as Match Group reported results that missed Wall Street expectationsThe chief executive of Tinder has left the dating app after less than a year after the market value of its parent company plunged by more than a fifth following reporting disappointing results.The departure of Renate Nyborg was one of a number of management changes announced by the $20bn Match Group, which owns dating brands including Hinge, Tinder and Match.com. Continue reading...

Computer engineer who accidentally discarded hard drive consults Newport council over schemeA computer engineer who accidentally threw away a hard drive containing approximately £150m worth of bitcoin plans to use artificial intelligence to search through thousands of tonnes of landfill.James Howells discarded the hardware from an old laptop containing 8,000 bitcoins in 2013 during an office clearout and now believes it is sitting in a rubbish dump in Newport, south Wales. Continue reading...

In an industry notorious for neglecting its past, one developer is trying to make a game that will be playable (and enigmatic) long into the futureIn January 2020, players of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time stumbled on a buried spaceship: a fully functional “Arwing” fighter from another classic Nintendo game, Star Fox 64. The Arwing was added as a programmer’s shortcut to, essentially, teach a dragon how to fly. Once the dragon was airborne, the ship was hidden away in Ocarina of Time’s source code, where hackers unearthed it 22 years later.“It’s amazing to me that it was there all this time – it just took a lot of digging to find it,” says Billy Basso, a game developer from Chicago. “It’s completely inessential, but it helps people bond with how games are made, the creators behind them and the time and place. It connects you to history in a way.” Basso hopes to foster similar connections with Animal Well, an eerie pixel-art cave system which its creator hopes will have plenty of secrets left to uncover a decade from now.Animal Well will debut on PlayStation 5 and Steam; release date to be confirmed Continue reading...