Technology | The Guardian

After the year of plenty that was 2020, 2021 has so far been a pretty lean one for video games. Are things about to turn around?It has not, I’m sure we can all agree, been a standout year for video games. Although the ongoing pandemic certainly encouraged more people to play, especially online, the release schedule has been … patchy. The fact that two standout titles of 2021 so far are cartoon platformer sequels to games from the 00s – Psychonauts 2 and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart – tells us a lot about how weird this year has been. Hitman 3, Resident Evil Village and It Takes Two were all solid (and my editor would tell you that Returnal is unmissable), but the schedule has relied heavily on updated editions and remakes – take a bow Super Mario 3D World, Mass Effect Legendary Edition and Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut.We know why this has happened. Covid ramped up the difficulty level of building games to Impossible Mode, with teams working at home, having to download millions of GBs of data, dealing with remote access to dodgy builds and holding intricate design meetings over Zoom from the kitchen table while homeschooling their kids. The result has been endless delays, including Horizon Forbidden West, Ghostwire: Tokyo and Gran Turismo 7 (though that last one is not really a shock, to be honest). Continue reading...

Amid rumours that he may in fact be CGI, Goldstein – who plays Roy Kent in the hit show – posted a video that raises more questions than it answersMichael, a famous actor is being quoted proclaiming he is ‘a human man’ and not, as apparently alleged, CGI. What is going on please?Steph, great question. There is a supposedly human man called Brett Goldstein who plays a grumpy footballer in the show Ted Lasso, on which he’s also a writer. Unfortunately his face is extremely matte and slightly too chiselled, and there is something deeply unsettling about the specific shadows cast by his football jersey – which has led many people on Reddit to believe that he is not, in fact, a real actor but instead a CGI animation of a grumpy footballer. Continue reading...

Missing Richard Simmons’s Dan Taberski returns with a new series about the ripple effects of the attacks which took place 20 years ago this week. Plus: Philippa Perry on sibling stresses9/12 (Available now on Wondery+ and Amazon Music, and widely from 8 September)

Online message board company preparing for initial public offering in early 2022, insiders sayReddit is seeking to hire investment bankers and lawyers for an initial public offering in New York, two people familiar with the matter told the Reuters news agency.Reddit was valued at $10bn in a private fundraising round last month. By the time the IPO would take place early next year, the online message board company is hoping it will be valued at more than $15bn, one of the sources said. Continue reading...

Messaging app calls €225m fine for breaking data protection rules ‘entirely disproportionate’Ireland’s data privacy watchdog has slapped WhatsApp with a record €225m (£193m) fine for violating EU data protection rules.The Dublin-based Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced the decision on Thursday after a three-year investigation into the messaging app, which is owned by Facebook. It ordered WhatsApp to remedy its policies to protect personal data. Continue reading...

‘Reader apps’ such as Spotify, Netflix and Kindle will be able to share links to help users manage accountsApple has made a significant concession in its battle for control of the App Store, after the Japanese trade commission ruled that the company’s restrictions on apps such as Spotify, Netflix and Kindle were anticompetitive.Those “reader apps”, which allow users to view, read or listen to content purchased elsewhere, were previously banned by Apple’s policies from telling people how to subscribe to – or buy content from – their services. That lead to outcomes such as Netflix’s iOS app offering the ability to log in to an account, but no way to sign up for an account, nor even a hint that users need to sign up in the first place. Continue reading...

We live in a world where our expression of ourselves online is not false, but controlled. The video game takes me back to a more innocent, enjoyable timeA few weeks ago, on a low-rumbling hangover that never threatened to push me into the abyss, something very interesting happened to me (and about 16 other people): I started rigorously documenting my Football Manager experience online.For those not versed in Football Manager, it is a video game in which you, well, assume the role of a football manager and attempt, very slowly and carefully, to guide the club of your choice to glory. You get to do things such as answer emails and renegotiate the annual contract of your under-18s coach. Occasionally, you can sign a right-back. There is a button after every match that gives you the option to throw a water bottle. Continue reading...

Age Appropriate Design Code mandates apps to take ‘best interests’ of child users into accountA sweeping set of regulations governing how online services should treat children’s data have been welcomed by campaigners as they come into effect.The Age Appropriate Design Code – which was written into law as part of the 2018 Data Protection Act, which also implemented GDPR in the UK – mandates websites and apps from Thursday to take the “best interests” of their child users into account, or face fines of up to 4% of annual global turnover. Continue reading...

Some of site’s largest subreddits switched to private, saying Reddit is failing to tackle misinformation

Retailer says it will add 40,000 jobs in the US and 2,500 in the UK to support plans for rapid growthAmazon is planning to hire 55,000 staff in corporate and technology jobs in a global recruitment drive as the coronavirus pandemic fuels a boom in online retail, digital advertising and cloud computing.The chief executive, Andy Jassy, who took over from Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, in July, said the company planned to take on more workers in multiple locations worldwide to drive rapid growth at the firm. Continue reading...

When ‘safety mode’ is activated it will temporarily block accounts if site’s systems identify harmful behaviourTwitter is trialling an anti-troll feature that will automatically block accounts sending abuse to users.Once Twitter’s new “safety mode” is activated by a user, it will temporarily block accounts for seven days if the tech firm’s systems spot them using harmful language or sending repetitive, uninvited replies and mentions. Continue reading...

Time spent on the ‘funhouse mirror’ of video-conferencing calls has resulted in a distortion of our self imageThe effects of staring at ourselves for hours at a time during video conference calls has resulted in a breakdown of how we perceive our own self image.The phenomenon has been nicknamed “Zoom dysmorphia” by the dermatologist and Harvard Medical School professor Dr Shadi Kourosh, who has noticed an increase in appointment requests for appearance-related issues during the pandemic. Continue reading...

PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S (version tested), PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch; Gamious/Whitehorn Digital

Collector known as Pranksy has cryptocurrency returned after what appeared to be elaborate hoaxIn hindsight, it looked too good to be true: the chance to buy Banksy’s first foray into the lucrative world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for only a fraction of his soaring market prices.The piece (called Great Redistribution of the Climate Change Disaster) did enough to convince a buyer – confusingly named Pranksy – to pay the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of pounds only to have the currency returned after what appeared to be an elaborate hoax by a scammer. Continue reading...

The author on why he’s chosen to release his next book on the online platform – and why he hopes digital won’t see off the medium he loves mostOut of the gloom Salman Rushdie floats into view, his familiar face with short beard and glasses hovering on screen in front of a library that should win any competition for the most impressive Zoom bookshelf backdrop.From his New York apartment he is here to share three things: he has made a deal to publish his next work of fiction as a serialised novella on Substack; he intends to fulfil a long held, once thwarted desire to be a film critic; and he still doesn’t have the courage to write poetry. Continue reading...

US tech firm fined for not complying with order to come up with proposals on compensating publishersGoogle is appealing against a €500m (£430m) fine imposed by France’s antitrust watchdog after a dispute with local media about paying for news content.The financial penalty came amid increasing international pressure on online platforms such as Google and Facebook to share more of the revenue they make from using media outlets’ content. Continue reading...

Catherine Chen says Chinese telecoms firm will use technical expertise to reach new markets less dependent on the USHuawei has been forced to adopt the mentality of a startup partly because of US government sanctions, Catherine Chen, a board member for the Chinese telecommunications company, has said.Helping to run probably the most scrutinised company in the world, she said Huawei would survive and eventually break free of the attempted US shackles by using its technical expertise to forge a path into new markets less dependent on the US, such as energy conservation, artificial intelligence and electric cars. Continue reading...

Up for discussion in the Guardian tech newsletter: Samsung lead the way in flexible screens … OnlyFans’ U-turn on adult content ban … and Instagram’s age verification moveWhat will your next phone look like? Will it be a featureless black rectangle from the front, with a bulbous many-lensed camera unit emerging from the rear? Or will it be … different?Samsung is one of a growing number of companies betting that now is time for a change. The company’s latest phones, the Galaxy Flip 3 and Galaxy Fold 3, aren’t going to be mistaken for an iPhone at a distance: both are built, in different ways, around a flexible screen, with a hinge that bisects the whole device and fundamentally changes how it works. Continue reading...

The medical startup CEO is charged with six counts of fraud and faces up to 20 years in prisonThe trial of Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the blood testing startup Theranos, began in a California courthouse on Tuesday, marking the latest chapter in a saga that has captured the attention of millions and prompted a reckoning with the Silicon Valley hype machine.Holmes, 37, is charged with six counts of fraud relating to her now-defunct medical startup, which once claimed its technology would revolutionize the medical industry by performing a range of tests with just a small sample, such as from a finger prick. The claims were later revealed to be largely fabricated. Continue reading...

People come to these videos to feel peaceful and good. It makes sense that they would then take turns to sweetly compliment each other

Move is part of firm’s efforts to introduce child-safe experience for under-18sInstagram will require all users to enter their birthdate before using the app, Facebook has announced, as part of the company’s efforts to introduce a child-safe experience for users under 18.The requirement has been introduced just two days before the UK begins enforcing the age appropriate design code. The code requires companies to identify child users and take special effort to safeguard their personal data, limit attempts to alter their behaviour, and prioritise their wellbeing. Continue reading...

Want an original artwork in your home but don’t know where to start? We’ve got you and your empty feature wall coveredYou’ve been locked down and staring at the walls for months. It’s time for a change of scene.Related: From the Pilbara to Australia’s classrooms: meet the Indigenous kids teaching the nation Continue reading...

Jess Impiazzi stars as a TV show android who has a different husband each day but gets hacked in this scattershot dramaThis is an inane hodgepodge of sci-fi, political thriller and perhaps some kind of ill-considered satire – of reality TV, venal politicians? It’s hard to divine the target when the attack is so scattershot. It is supposed to take place in the US in 2040 where everyone is obsessed with watching a daily TV show about a buxom android housewife with an English accent named Ria (Jess Impiazzi); she spends every day nearly the same way with her husband Jack, from waking up and breakfasting to winding down with an evening soap opera and then sex if Jack so wishes. In other words, it’s The Truman Show meets The Stepford Wives, except there’s just the one wife – and the twist is that “Jack” is played by a different person in each episode. The first we meet is Luke Goss, who seems to be merely passing though before being replaced the next night while a recharged Ria gets rebooted with Jack number 2 (Amar Adatia), a coarser, crueller mate for a day, who is in turn replaced by many more Jacks – some of them women. Continue reading...

The company’s collapse has changed the startup environment, but some say the industry still hasn’t faced a ‘true reckoning’A charismatic young leader, billions of dollars in valuations and a technology that promised to change the world but failed to deliver: the meteoric rise and fantastic fall of the medical tech startup Theranos has been seen by many as an indictment of the hype-train attitude of Silicon Valley.Nearly 20 years after Theranos’s launch, its CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, is headed to trial, charged with defrauding clients and investors. Silicon Valley is facing a public that’s wary of its methods and intentions – but the verdict is still out on whether startup culture has fundamentally changed. Continue reading...

Country will be first to adopt cryptocurrency as legal tender next month – but economists are sounding warnings over risksLitha María de Los Angeles slaps two cheese-filled pupusas – the El Salvadoran cornmeal flatbread – on the griddle. With a camera click on the QR code, she receives her payment: four hundred-thousandths of a Bitcoin. Then, as the rain pelts the corrugated iron roof and a gust of wind lifts the blue plastic table cloths, the power cuts out.A tumultuous few weeks awaits El Salvador as it prepares to become the first country to adopt Bitcoin, the world’s most popular decentralised digital currency, as legal tender on 7 September. With that deadline looming, a host of challenges – technological, financial and criminal – threaten to sink the plan of the president, Nayib Bukele, to ride the Central American economy out of its current choppy waters on the back of a cryptocurrency wave. Continue reading...

Guardian Australia picture editor Carly Earl explains the dos and don’ts of taking pictures of the moonWhen a full moon rises, many people will pull out their mobile phones to try and take an Instagram-worthy picture, but unfortunately it is really challenging to get a great photograph of.Two reasons: it is very far away and unless you have a telephoto lens (which makes the moon appear closer than it is) it will always appear as a very small glowing dot in the frame. Continue reading...

Site announced last week it was suspending adult content, only to quickly change its mindFor five days, it looked as if one of Britain’s most successful tech startups was on the verge of a make-or-break gamble, one that would either see it burst on to the global stage or destroy its billion-dollar business.OnlyFans, a self-described “subscription social network”, announced last week that it would ban sexually explicit content from October. The ban was a shock because, behind the generic branding, such content is perceived to be OnlyFans’ biggest draw. Continue reading...

He’s the Silicon Valley Übermensch, the maverick boss of Tesla and SpaceX who wants us to colonise Mars and who can wipe out billions of dollars with a single tweet. So what’s not to love?It’s interesting whenever Elon Musk’s name comes up and people begin discussing his accomplishments, such as the reinvention of money, automobiles and space travel, there’s always someone who says: “Yeah, but I hear he can be a real dick.”Take that, Elon. Continue reading...

Trillions of metallic nodules on the sea floor could help stop global heating, but mining them may damage ocean ecologyIn a display cabinet in the recently opened Our Broken Planet exhibition in London’s Natural History Museum, curators have placed a small nugget of dark material covered with faint indentations. The blackened lump could easily be mistaken for coal. Its true nature is much more intriguing, however.The nugget is a polymetallic nodule and oceanographers have discovered trillions of them litter Earth’s ocean floors. Each is rich in manganese, nickel, cobalt and copper, some of the most important ingredients for making the electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels that we need to replace the carbon-emitting lorries, power plants and factories now wrecking our climate. Continue reading...

As blood testing startup founder’s fraud trial looms, John Carreyrou says hero worship is still a problem in Silicon ValleyThe unraveling of Theranos began with a 2015 article in the Wall Street Journal that revealed how the revolutionary technology promoted by the blood testing startup wasn’t exactly what it seemed.Over the proceeding months, the reporter John Carreyrou exposed how the testing devices the Silicon Valley darling said could perform a variety of medical tests with just a drop of blood were not actually being used to perform most of the analyses. Investors and consumers, Carreyrou found, were being fooled. Continue reading...

Once the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire, the former head of Theranos is facing fraud charges and possible jail timeThe rise and fall of the blood testing startup Theranos turned the tech world upside down and captured the attention of millions beyond Silicon Valley, inspiring multiple books, documentaries and a television series.Theranos set out to revolutionize the medical testing space, reaching a valuation of $10bn before the capabilities of its core technology were revealed to be largely fabricated. Now, its founder and former leader, Elizabeth Holmes, is about to face the music. Continue reading...

The director’s latest film – in which a daughter enters the virtual mind of her serial killer mother – is so-so compared to his earlier effortsAfter the mega-budget blowouts of 2013’s Elysium (which had some tried-and-tested ideas rattling around inside it) and 2015’s Chappie (which had Die Antwoord), this so-so shocker finds mooted multiplex saviour Neill Blomkamp recalibrating his disc space and career prospects. Operating with TV-movie production values and nary a single familiar face among its 10-strong cast, it’s a small, manageable, patchily inspired genre piece that unpicks the fraught relationship between a daughter, her convict mother, and a medical tech firm instigating an altogether unhappy reunion.Much of Demonic suggests a sometime “visionary director” who has turned to streaming-bound work-for-hire to make ends meet; it’s cautiously compiled, competent work-for-hire, but the wild swings and grand designs of this film-maker’s earlier output are sorely missed. It’s at its most Blomkampian early on, with the integration of effects into the plot: our heroine Carly (Carly Pope) submits to “volumetric capture” (essentially mo-cap 2.0) so she can enter a virtual-world simulation that will allow her to interact with her comatose mum. Inevitably, this passage into a digital wonderland is preceded with dire warnings as to what might happen if memories slip out of sync, and inevitably, the simulation doesn’t run as smoothly as hoped. Partly this is due to the vast reserves of anger Carly ports into this virtual realm, partly due to the proximity of a giant skeletal hellbeast. These scenes have a distinctive, hyperreal look (and presumably blew the budget), rotoscoping over the uncanny-valley glitches that have blighted countless blockbusters. This time, the glitches are deliberate: the aim is to unsettle. Continue reading...

Inspired by a Guardian article, the theatre’s surreal and spellbinding show AI is a collaboration between humans and the system GPT-3Last autumn, a deep-learning computer programme wrote an essay for the Guardian. The GPT-3 system argued that humans had nothing to fear from robots. Kwame Kwei-Armah, artistic director of the Young Vic, read it and felt inspired. Could there be a future in creative collaboration between AI and humans? If AI could write an article, could it create a play too, in real time, before an audience?The Young Vic’s new show, AI, explores these questions, casting the same technology as its virtual star. The production is not so much a piece of theatre as dramaturgy, rehearsal and workshop all in one, and contains its own riveting meta drama: a play is constructed over multiple evenings, culminating in a short show that combines human direction and performance with machine imagination and stagecraft (the use of algorithms to create its soundtrack, for example). Continue reading...

Lockdown or no lockdown, the video-call date is here to stay. Experts reveal how to look your best, keep the conversation flowing and turn that online spark into a face-to-face meetingAs if first dates aren’t awkward enough, along comes video dating to add an extra layer of tech frustration and misinterpreted body language to the mix. During lockdown, video calls – either within a dating app, or on platforms such as Zoom – took off. But as restrictions lift, many dating experts predict the format is here to stay – or at least that it has become a helpful additional step. Dating apps rolled out video call functions last year, and Hinge found that 65% of people who had been on a virtual date planned to continue post-pandemic. Of Tinder’s younger users (Generation Z daters, in their late teens and early 20s), half have used video dating. So you may as well perfect your on-screen hairstyle, decide what to wear on your upper half and embrace it. Here are some tips on how to succeed. Continue reading...

Payment platform offers service for bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and bitcoin cashPayPal is to allow users in the UK to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies through the payment platform for the first time.The firm said it would allow customers to choose from four types of cryptocurrency – bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and bitcoin cash – and that the service would be available via the PayPal app and its website. Continue reading...

Victor Keegan, the correspondent who went on to put the first Guardian content online, recalls the chance news item in 1981 that opened up the possibilities of home computing and kicked off the paper’s dedicated coverage of a social revolutionTechnology isn’t a beat with a natural affinity for nostalgia. The industry thrives on its futuristic image, worships boy-CEOs and renders the past obsolete at a frightening pace.Even in the eight years I’ve sat on the Guardian’s technology desk, the field I cover is frequently unrecognisable from what it was when I started – a world where self-driving cars were just around the corner, where virtual reality was an impressive technology that had failed to catch on with normal people, and where the world was starting to tire of the like-clockwork appearance of a new iPhone every 12 months. Continue reading...

According to addiction expert Dr Anna Lembke, our smartphones are making us dopamine junkies, with each swipe, like and tweet feeding our habit. So how do we beat our digital dependency?Dr Anna Lembke, a world-leading expert on addiction, is concerned about my “phone problem”. During our interview I confess, in passing, to having an unhealthy attachment to my iPhone, checking it every few minutes like a compulsive tic (sound familiar?) Lembke is having none of it. She wants me to abstain from using it for at least 24 hours by locking it in a drawer and going out. The first 12 hours will be filled with anxiety and Fomo, but as time unfolds, I’ll experience a sense of “real freedom”, will gain insight into my relationship with my digital companion and will “resolve to get back to using it a little differently”, she says, speaking with a soothing yet firm tone.I’d do well to heed her advice. As the chief of Stanford University’s dual diagnosis addiction clinic (which caters to people with more than one disorder), Lembke has spent the past 25-plus years treating patients addicted to everything from heroin, gambling and sex to video games, Botox and ice baths. The bespectacled 53-year-old psychiatrist has written an influential book about the prescription-drug epidemic, delivered Ted Talks on America’s opioid crisis and appeared as a talking head in the 2020 Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma to discuss the drug that is social media. She’s a whiz on why we get hooked on things – and how we can enjoy pleasurable things in healthier doses. Continue reading...

Beloved by journalists and increasingly used by a wider public, Tveeder is still run from Franco Trimboli’s Melbourne bedroom, in his spare time, out of his own pocketOn any given day, Franco Trimboli’s hobby makes the news.During office hours the 42-year-old who lives in suburban Melbourne is a coder, digital designer and project manager for the educational branch of the jobs website Seek. Continue reading...

Billionaire Tesla chief gives no indication of any progress in actually building such a machineElon Musk said he would probably launch a humanoid robot prototype next year dubbed the “Tesla Bot”, which is designed to do “boring, repetitious and dangerous” work.The billionaire chief executive of the electric carmaker Tesla said the robot, which would be about 5ft 8in (1.7m) tall and weigh 125 pounds (56kg), would be able to handle tasks such as attaching bolts to cars with a spanner or picking up groceries at stores. Continue reading...

The iPhone maker had previously told its global workforce to plan for a phased return from October

New scam spreads to Australia from Europe, targeting thousands of Android usersThousands of Australians have been hit by a new scam text message known as Flubot, which aims to install malware on their phones.Flubot is a type of malware targeting Android users, but iPhone users can also receive the messages. It tells the receiver they missed a call or have a new voicemail, providing a fake link to listen. Continue reading...

Company’s latest move comes after years of competing against brick-and-mortar retailersAmazon is planning to open department stores after years of competing against, and in some cases helping to destroy, the very same traditional brick-and-mortar retailers.The company’s latest move to bricks and mortar, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes after Amazon earlier this week eclipsed even Walmart in overall sales to become the world’s largest retail seller outside China. Continue reading...

The tech firm aims to restore more water than it consumes, as it competes to meet green goalsFacebook has announced plans to become “water positive” by 2030, restoring more water than the company consumes globally.The firm is leaning further into a virtuous skirmish between the world’s largest technology players, as they all compete to be the first to achieve carbon neutrality, commit to offsetting the emissions created by their customers as well as their own operations, and even plan to eliminate all carbon emitted over the organisation’s lifetime. Continue reading...

Some prototypes exist, but firms have struggled to commercialise a durable solid-state batteryBritish manufacturers believe the UK could become a significant exporter of solid-state batteries that could pave the way for lighter, longer-range electric cars within a decade, as a group of companies teamed up to develop prototypes.The FTSE 100 chemicals company Johnson Matthey, the battery startup Britishvolt, which is backed by Glencore, and Oxford University are among the seven institutions that have signed a memorandum of understanding promising to work together on the technology. Continue reading...

Push comes as Fortnite creator Epic Games fights a global legal battle against the tech giants over in-app paymentsAs Fortnite creator Epic Games continues its global legal battle against Apple and Google over in-app payments, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says “upfront rules and regulations” may be needed to force the tech giants to open their app stores to greater competition.For Apple iOS platforms, developers must use the App Store, while for Google, apps can be installed on Android devices outside the Play store either through direct download or alternative marketplaces, but uptake of these options is limited. Continue reading...

Xbox, PC; Luis Antonia/Annapurna Interactive

Analysis: Twitter has faced criticism for allowing members to post, while Facebook has taken harder line

Demand for voice actors increases, providing relief for workers whose other sources of income has dried up

The makers of robot weeders say the machines can reduce pesticide use and be part of a more sustainable food systemIn the corner of an Ohio field, a laser-armed robot inches through a sea of onions, zapping weeds as it goes.This field doesn’t belong to a dystopian future but to Shay Myers, a third-generation farmer whose TikTok posts about farming life often go viral. Continue reading...

By turns as cerebral as Star Trek, as hopeful as Asimov and as dramatic as Battlestar Galactica, the video game series deserves a place among the sci-fi greatsOur species will one day end. Whether it’s down to our own hubris, the disastrous effects of unbridled wealth accumulation and social division, war, the climate crisis, plague, a space rock or perhaps unfriendly aliens – we’ll one day be dust caught in cosmic winds, lost to an indifferent universe. On our pale blue dot, the remnants of once-great civilisations and vanished peoples that we unearth already show us that advanced development is no guarantee of perpetuity.In sci-fi, humanity’s naive yearning to fight on despite this realisation often proves a point of curiosity – and sometimes inspiration – for alien species. This is front and centre of the Mass Effect trilogy of video games, in which our imminent annihilation is given form in the tendrils of creatures called Reapers: ancient, building-sized, alien-robot hybrids that wipe out most life in the Milky Way every 50,000 years. Continue reading...