French researchers have developed a phone case that mimics the haptics of human skin. The interface could open up a new world of tactile communication. There are two styles, a simple version and an 'ultra realistic' version, but the anthropomorphic add-on is still just a prototype Continue reading...

Still an absolute beast in every way, even if it’s just a minor update to an already cracking smartphoneThe OnePlus 7T Pro is an update to the best phone of the first half of 2019 and the good news is that they haven’t messed up, with tweaks that make it just as good, if not better, than the model it replaces.The bad news is that the updated phone starts at £50 more than its predecessor, at £699, although as it also comes with more storage and RAM; in effect it matches the cost of the earlier mid-range 7 Pro version. It also gains a faster processor, an improved camera and a slightly tweaked paint job. Continue reading...

The Irish composer and conductor – who’s worked with film director Gus Van Sant and on World of Warcraft – talks passionately about making game musicEímear Noone got into composing and conducting video game music by accident. One day, while studying music at Trinity College Dublin, a fourth-year student came to the bar she was drinking in with members of the college chapel choir and offered them a few quid to help with the orchestration on a project of his.“I have a vivid memory of sitting on a studio floor somewhere in Dublin writing choral parts with my pals and then singing them,” she says. “Six months later, my brother calls me in a complete tizzy and says, ‘Did you work on Metal Gear Solid?’ I was like, ‘No!’ He says, ‘Well, I’m looking at your name on the screen credits right now.’ And sure enough, the session she had contributed to for beer money was the soundtrack to Hideo Kojima’s blockbuster adventure game. “Years later, I was at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing conducting this very piece of music,” she says. “It’s just a bizarre life.” Continue reading...

The company confirmed it had dismantled the four accounts and announced initiatives to prevent foreign interference in US campaignsFacebook on Monday disclosed it had taken down four new foreign interference operations originating from Iran and Russia, including one targeting the US 2020 presidential elections that appears to be linked to the Russian troll agency, the Internet Research Agency (IRA).The suspected IRA campaign “had the hallmarks of a well-resourced operation that took consistent operational security steps to conceal their identity and location”, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said in a blogpost. Continue reading...

Update will prevent new smartphone being unlocked using owner’s sleeping faceGoogle has said it will update its new Pixel 4 phones to prevent them being unlocked using the sleeping faces of their owners.The phones, which are not yet in shops, are the first from Google to include a secure face unlock feature, in place of the fingerprint sensor used on previous iterations. The feature is also used to confirm payments and sign in to apps. Continue reading...

As part of the Guardian’s Automating Poverty series, Robert Booth looked at how and why the Department for Work and Pensions in the UK is increasing investment in testing artificial intelligence to assess benefits claims. He talks to Jordan Erica Webber about his findings Continue reading...

Robot Wars survivor David Wreckham has found new purpose as the face of the Campaign to Stop Killer RobotsAn international campaign takes its battle to outlaw “killer robots” to the UN this week with a new ally – a “peace robot”.Created by an inventor from the BBC programme Robot Wars, the droid, known as David Wreckham, has been recruited to deliver a message to world leaders in New York on Monday. Continue reading...

The dating app has become the go-to tool for singles looking for a ‘hook-up’ rather than a relationship. Its chief executive reckons it can broaden its appeal – but will have to get tough with some usersSwipe right for “would like to meet”, left for “wouldn’t”. Seven years after Tinder made choosing a date as simple as flicking your thumb across a smartphone screen, it is by far the most-used dating app in the UK and the US. Downloaded 300m times and with more than 5 million paying subscribers, it is the highest-grossing app of any kind in the world, according to the analysts App Annie. For Americans, apps and online dating are the most common way to meet a partner. “It’s an amazing responsibility, and an amazing privilege,” says Elie Seidman, Tinder’s 45-year-old chief executive. If he finds it less daunting than others might, that’s because, before he took over Tinder in 2018, he was in charge of OkCupid, the Tinder of the 00s. He has spent much of his working life helping people to find love.“The vast majority of our employees are energised by that very mission,” he says. “We’re not selling plumbing supplies, right? Obviously, plumbing is really important, but ours is a really noble and exciting mission. So, when we’re taking new risks – new challenges, new chances – we know that, if we’re successful, it’s about helping members connect.” Continue reading...

Policymakers might learn from London’s Silicon Roundabout experienceEvery city wants a cluster, a concentration of high-productivity firms and workers beavering away in a particular industry in a particular place. Proximity means ideas and productivity growing and spreading. Who doesn’t want their own Silicon Valley?David Cameron certainly did. In November 2010, he announced the “Tech City” programme, aiming to grow a digital cluster in Shoreditch, east London. The plan was to use branding to get firms in, networking to ensure those ideas get flowing with focused support for high-potential firms. Continue reading...

It may be some way off, but mind uploading, the digital duplication of your mental essence, could expand human experience into a virtual afterlifeImagine that a person’s brain could be scanned in great detail and recreated in a computer simulation. The person’s mind and memories, emotions and personality would be duplicated. In effect, a new and equally valid version of that person would now exist, in a potentially immortal, digital form. This futuristic possibility is called mind uploading. The science of the brain and of consciousness increasingly suggests that mind uploading is possible – there are no laws of physics to prevent it. The technology is likely to be far in our future; it may be centuries before the details are fully worked out – and yet given how much interest and effort is already directed towards that goal, mind uploading seems inevitable. Of course we can’t be certain how it might affect our culture but as the technology of simulation and artificial neural networks shapes up, we can guess what that mind uploading future might be like.Suppose one day you go into an uploading clinic to have your brain scanned. Let’s be generous and pretend the technology works perfectly. It’s been tested and debugged. It captures all your synapses in sufficient detail to recreate your unique mind. It gives that mind a standard-issue, virtual body that’s reasonably comfortable, with your face and voice attached, in a virtual environment like a high-quality video game. Let’s pretend all of this has come true. Continue reading...

Their smartphones do everything, but can teenagers master old tech and life skills – from reading a map to setting an alarm clock?Three 15-year-old school children are on the phone, in class. No, it’s OK, they’re supposed to be; they’ve been told to, by me, with permission from their teacher. And they’re not actually on the phone, because they don’t know how to use it. It’s an old-fashioned rotary telephone, finger-in-the-dial variety. They’re tapping it, prodding at the holes. Hahahaha – they haven’t got a clue.Loxford is an academy in Ilford, east London. I’ve come here with a suitcase stuffed full of the past, tech from my own childhood, mostly borrowed from nostalgic hoarder colleagues. Everything in the case is obsolete: it’s all been shrunk to fit into the smartphones today’s 15-year-olds almost all have. It’s a kind of social experiment, about different generations, lost skills, changing technology – what Loxford media studies teacher Mr Rushworth calls “convergence”. OK, and it’s also about having a laugh; and getting my generation’s own back for those times we’ve had to go crawling to a teenager for technical assistance, such as asking how to make the video on WhatsApp work. Continue reading...

Billy Foister died last month after a heart attack at work. The incident was just one in a series of recent accidents and fatalitiesIn September, Billy Foister, a 48-year-old Amazon warehouse worker, died after a heart attack at work. According to his brother, an Amazon human resources representative informed him at the hospital that Billy had lain on the floor for 20 minutes before receiving treatment from Amazon’s internal safety responders.“How can you not see a 6ft 3in man laying on the ground and not help him within 20 minutes? A couple of days before, he put the wrong product in the wrong bin and within two minutes management saw it on camera and came down to talk to him about it,” Edward Foister said. Continue reading...

Design Museum, London

Support for Mark Zuckerberg’s mission to reshape global finance is slipping away slowly but surelyWhen Facebook announced plans to launch a digital currency earlier this summer, it added a full-blown revolution in global finance to its typically vaulting Silicon Valley mission statement: to create a digital currency alongside its efforts to bring the world closer together through networks.Over the past month, that mission has gone badly awry. The Libra cryptocurrency project now faces existential threats from world leaders and central bankers worried about its harmful potential: as a vehicle for money laundering, a threat to global financial stability, open to data privacy abuse, dangerous for consumers and stripping nations of the control of their economies by privatising the money supply. Continue reading...

The author of Hooked, a bible of addictive tech design, now offers advice on how not to be distracted. But is his self-help argument convincing?In The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley points out that the Lord’s Prayer has 50 words, and six of them are dedicated to imploring God not to lead us into temptation. When I was a child sitting in Sunday school in west Texas, I often wondered why God would engineer these temptations into our environment in the first place – much less lead us into them – if he was only going to enjoin us to avoid them later.Today I feel the same way about the creators of our technological environments. We are bombarded at every turn with persuasive design that exploits our psychological weaknesses and often leads us into temptation, habituation and distraction. At the same time, we are expected to take up arms against these distractions, to muster superhuman levels of self-regulation, just to adapt to this all-out war others are waging for our attention. Continue reading...

The CEO argues essentially, that the arc of the moral universe is long, but as long as people have a voice (on Facebook) it bends toward justiceI was a 20-year-old college junior when I first signed up for Facebook on 9 February 2004, a date that I will henceforth refer to as The Day Mark Zuckerberg Gave Me a Voice. If this sounds like an absurd premise – my parents, siblings and childhood friends who listened to me jabber and moan for the first two decades of my life would certainly be surprised to learn of my retroactive voicelessness – then consider the bizarre and fundamental wrongness of Zuckerberg’s treatise on “free expression”.In the speech at Georgetown University, Zuckerberg presented a defense of Facebook that relied on defining the social media platform as a tool that gives people a voice. He extended this proposition to laughably unsupportable lengths, delivering lines such as, “A lot more people now have a voice – almost half the world,” in all apparent earnestness. Continue reading...

CEO faces quick backlash over highlighted policies, including on hate speech and voter suppressionMark Zuckerberg touted Facebook as a champion of “free expression” in a wide-sweeping speech, offering a staunch defense of the social media giant following several rocky years characterized by allegations against the platform of censorship and bias.Speaking at Georgetown University on Thursday, the Facebook CEO invoked Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr and Black Lives Matter as a means of positioning Facebook as a champion for freedom of speech. Continue reading...

Sanders and Warren want to break up the industry. That has not dented their popularity with its workers, Guardian analysis findsElizabeth Warren’s crusade against Silicon Valley has not dented her popularity among employees of major tech companies, according to the latest campaign fundraising filings. The progressive Democratic senator and her fellow leftist candidate, the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, are outraising their more centrist rivals among tech workers in the presidential campaign, a Guardian analysis found.Related: Ocasio-Cortez endorsement gives Sanders shot in the arm at critical time Continue reading...

Phone network with 10m UK customers apologises for voice, text and data problemsMillions of Three UK mobile phone network customers were unable to use their phones after a network meltdown.The company, which has 10 million users in the UK, said the the problem started on Wednesday night and service had started to be returned to some customers on Thursday. The network advised customers to switch their phones off and on again to restore service. Continue reading...

PC/Mac; Denki, Curve Digital

Colin wants a laptop with easily replaceable parts such as memory and hard drivesI just read last week’s answer about upgrading or replacing a six-year-old ThinkPad laptop. I want a laptop where I can easily replace components such as memory and hard drives. How does one go about finding out which modern laptops are modifiable by users? ColinThe one-sentence answer is that consumer laptops often can’t be modified by users, while business laptops can. There are lots of exceptions, but it’s a reasonable rule-of-thumb. Continue reading...

Sale is a sealed-bid auction, in which each potential buyer is blind to what others offer, but is expected to get $300,000 or moreWhat is democracy worth? Later this month a broadly philosophical question will be put to a material test.On 25 October at 5pm, the web domain democracy.com goes up for auction. The site is currently administered by the veteran social activist Talmage Cooley. The advertised price, according to Heritage Auctions, is $300,000 or higher. Continue reading...

South Korean-based site accepted digital currency for access to videos, with victims rescued in US, UK and SpainHundreds of people have been arrested in a worldwide operation over a South Korea-based dark web child sexual abuse site that sold videos for digital cash.Officials from the United States, Britain and South Korea described the network as one of the largest operations they had encountered to date. Continue reading...

Climbdown follows difficulties with implementing plan to ensure users are over 18Plans to introduce a nationwide age verification system for online pornography have been abandoned by the government after years of technical troubles and concerns from privacy campaigners.The climbdown follows countless difficulties with implementing the policy, which would have required all pornography websites to ensure users were over 18. Methods would have included checking credit cards or allowing people to buy a “porn pass” age verification document from a newsagent. Continue reading...

Ookla report rated Australia 61st in the world for fixed broadbandNBN Co chief executive Stephen Rue has argued Australia’s poor showing in global speed test rankings cannot be relied on because the data is “unrepresentative” of broadband available in the rest of the world.Broadband speed reports released by companies such as Ookla, M-Lab and Akamai show how each country fares for broadband, with Australia lagging behind. Continue reading...

John Lewis says sales of portable video cameras are ‘non-existent’. This may mark the end of an era defined by the hulking around of VHS monsters to create poor-quality home movies, but the alternative is even more troublingSad news for amateur film-makers; according to John Lewis, camcorders are practically a “non-existent” market, with sales down 33% this year. If they keep tumbling like this, it’s likely that they will soon join other anachronistic items that the department store chain stopped selling this year, such as clutch bags and fish kettles.But wait, people are still buying camcorders? In an age when the majority of people permanently carry around a smaller, sharper, better video recorder in their pockets, people are still committed to owning a separate device? Apparently so. Admittedly, many of the camcorders available on the John Lewis website include functionality not readily available on a phone – almost half are GoPros, which are basically camcorders you can strap to your head, while another has a built-in projector – but really? Camcorders in 2019? Isn’t that a bit of a pain? Continue reading...

In 12 months, Australian welfare payments were stopped an extra 1m times thanks to automated technologies. Money is stopped first and questions asked later, causing untold misery

Claimants are given a 12-digit number linked to their data, and if something goes wrong they can be refused foodMotka Manjhi had been back and forth to the ration shop four or five times, his wife said, but on each occasion he returned empty-handed. His thumbprint, needed to prove his identity, wasn’t registering on the new system.He was told to do an online update. But to do so he would need to get to a private centre – a four-mile journey from his village in Dumka, in the state of Jharkhand, north-east India. This would mean missing at least a day’s potential work, which he desperately needed to buy food. And even if he made the trek, there was no guarantee that the system, which often suffers from network outages, would be working properly. What was to be done? Continue reading...

UN’s rapporteur on extreme poverty says in devastating account big tech companies are being allowed to go unregulated in ‘human right free-zones’ and not held accountable

Competition-beating performance, super-smooth experience and new 90Hz screen are a steal at £549The OnePlus 7T takes the best bits of the brilliant OnePlus 7 Pro and condenses them into a smaller, cheaper package.Released less than four months after the last version hit the shelves, the new £500 7T doesn’t mess much with the winning formula, simply adding a better camera and market-leading 90Hz screen technology. Continue reading...

When Isaiah Hickland revealed he was behind the popular @emoblackthot Twitter account, fans felt scammed and pushback was swiftThe Twitter account @emoblackthot was a virtual therapist and best friend for over 170,000 followers – many of them people of color and/or queer. She would post gentle reminders to wear sunscreen every day and stay hydrated, rave about the latest songs she was obsessed with and share her struggles with anxiety and depression. If followers were experiencing anxiety attacks, @emoblackthot was there to talk them through it over DMs.On a platform overflowing with trolls and angry callouts, @emoblackthot stood out through her promotion of self-care and vulnerability and, as a consequence, quickly became viral. There was only one problem: she was not the person she claimed to be. Continue reading...

Blogpost sheds new light on how tweets will be treated but is unlikely to satisfy those calling for Trump’s censorship

Urgent action needed to prevent ‘abuse and deception’ of democratic process, say expertsBritain needs to take concerted action to reduce the risk of malicious actors in the UK and abroad from contaminating the results of a looming general election, according to a new study that warns of the risks of public “abuse and deception”.A group of experts say government, political parties and social media companies all need to take immediate action, at a time when there is rising concern within Whitehall about the integrity of the democratic process. Continue reading...

Smartphone comes with radar tech and is joined by revamped Nest Mini, Pixelbook Go and other devicesGoogle has launched its latest iPhone-competitor, the Pixel 4 and 4 XL, with new radar technology, dual-camera and a lower price.Google’s consumer hardware division unveiled a series of new devices in New York, led by the Pixel 4 smartphone and including an updated Nest Mini smart speaker and Nest Wifi system, among other products. Continue reading...

It’s back on! Out of the black hole, a whole new world begins, bringing fresh characters, weapons and maybe a redesigned progress systemIt begins. In familiar Fortnite fashion, the first news of the game’s future arrived throughout Monday night, not via official channels, but via the army of celebrity YouTubers and specialist leak accounts spread across social media. Rumours suggested the game may launch at any point in the next few hours.Then we got the cinematic trailer for what will be known as Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 1, showing four new characters arriving at dawn on a brand new island, featuring a beach area and gloop-spewing power plant. At the close of the trailer, the battle bus arrives, filled with familiar superstars from the game’s previous seasons, including our own personal favourite, Cuddle Team Leader. Continue reading...

Technological advantages in South Korea have helped make it fertile ground for startupsIn a country where the biggest companies are still king, Seoul’s burgeoning startup sector is finding its feet.Out in the west of the South Korean capital, a nine-storey building dressed in bright colours with a giant red bull outside is home to more than 100 startups. From one-person operations running out of a locker and a laptop on the ground floor, to fully-fledged offices on the upper levels, Seoul’s startup hub has supported 1,282 operations in various stages of growth in the past two years. Continue reading...

Season 10 of Fortnite climaxed in apocalyptic fashion – sucking gamers into a black hole. Whatever the future brings, it has transformed video-game storytellingOn Sunday evening, more than 6 million people gathered online via streaming services such as Twitch and YouTube to watch the end of the world. Not our world, thankfully, but the world of Fortnite, which was sucked into a black hole, taking the whole game and all player characters with it. If you try to load Fortnite today, you’ll be presented with a blank screen. When developer Epic Games called the finale of Fortnite Season 10 “The End”, it wasn’t kidding.OK, before confused parents start celebrating, let’s be clear: Fortnite will be back, it’s just that Epic has closed out the first chapter of the game, which has amassed 250 million players since the launch of its Battle Royale mode in September 2017. And amid all the hype, hysteria and controversy that has surrounded the gigantically successful title over the past two years, one aspect has been overlooked outside its fanbase: this has been one of the most innovative story experiments of the decade. Continue reading...

Vulnerable claimants already reporting problems, even before further DWP digital transformation

Marriage market for entrepreneurs and investors could be sign of a flourishing sector – or suggest bubble about to burstIn a wood-panelled auditorium in central London, a procession of entrepreneurs are explaining to more than 100 investors how they will change the world. They just need a few million pounds first.One promises to solve hair loss with a gadget in a cap; another will make fabric out of CO2: all come armed with PhDs, slick presentations and rictus grins. Continue reading...

Ad claims CEO backs Trump – then admits it’s not true – after company admits letting politicians make false statementsFacebook has been taking heat all week for its decision to allow politicians to make false statements in paid advertisements. Now the Democratic senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is taking the fight to the social media company’s own turf by taking out a series of Facebook ads that make false statements about Facebook and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.“Breaking news: Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook just endorsed Donald Trump for re-election,” the ads read, above a photograph of a recent Oval Office meeting between the billionaire tech executive and the president. Continue reading...

Several large companies have announced their departure, including Visa and Mastercard, a week after PayPal exitedNearly every payment firm that initially agreed to join Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra has backed out, in a potentially fatal blow to the social network’s plan for a worldwide digital currency.Visa and Mastercard said on Friday they would no longer participate in the Libra Association and Latin American payment system Mercado Pago announced it would back out as well. Several other large companies have announced their departures . Continue reading...

Profits on social media app surged by more than 50% to £97m in latest tax yearFacebook’s UK operations paid £28m in corporation tax last year despite achieving a record £1.6bn in British sales.The social media company’s latest UK accounts show that gross income from advertisers rose almost 30% last year to £1.65bn, and pretax profits surged by more than 50% from £63m to £97m. Continue reading...

At a time when companies are forced to pick sides, Zuckerberg’s refusal is a choice in itselfIt can be hard to remember from this side of a successful foreign intervention in a US presidential election, but in April 2016, Mark Zuckerberg was widely praised when he spoke out – however obliquely – against Donald Trump’s then longshot presidential candidacy.“I’m starting to see people and nations turning inward against this idea of a connected world,” the Facebook chief executive said in a speech. “I hear fearful voices talking about building walls … It takes courage to choose hope over fear.” Continue reading...

Digital currency must be subject to measures such as stress tests to gain approvalThe Bank of England has hardened its stance on Facebook’s Libra digital currency, telling the social media company it must meet its highest standards to get the green light for launch in Britain.In its toughest intervention to date, the central bank’s financial policy committee (FPC) said digital currencies such as Libra would need to reach the same high standards as those of traditional payments. Continue reading...

In court documents, Tesla CEO says he regrets attacking man who helped save young soccer players trapped in underwater caveElon Musk has claimed he was fooled by the investigator he hired to get dirt on a British diver, according to new court documents.“I’m a fucking idiot,” Musk said, according to documents surfaced in court on Tuesday, in the latest development in a bizarre defamation case brought against the Tesla CEO over comments made in 2018. Continue reading...

A cracking camera, great screen and 32-hour battery life – but at an eye-watering priceApple’s iPhone has gone “pro” for its 11th iteration, with dramatically improved cameras and longer battery life, which make the smaller iPhone 11 Pro the king of more manageable phones.Costing from £1,049 the iPhone 11 Pro is one of a rare breed: a premium flagship smartphone that doesn’t have a ginormous screen and is therefore small by today’s standards. Continue reading...

(House House; Panic Inc; Switch, PC, Mac)

Kamala Harris urged Twitter’s CEO to ban Trump. Is she right, or would it amount to an assault on free speech?Should Donald Trump, the most powerful man in the world, be banned from Twitter?Kamala Harris thinks so. On Tuesday she sent a letter to Twitter’s chief executive arguing that Trump has been violating the platform’s user agreement. Harris pointed to recent tweets Trump had sent harassing the Ukraine whistleblower and the House intelligence committee chairman, Adam Schiff, as well as Trump’s tweet threatening civil war. Continue reading...

Self-driving vehicles reach UK milestone with first demo in ‘complex urban environment’ in StratfordWork to bring driverless cars to Britain’s streets has reached a milestone with the first demonstration of an autonomous fleet driving in a “complex urban environment” in London.Ford Mondeos fitted with autonomous technology from the UK tech firm Oxbotica operated on public roads around the former Olympic Park in Stratford this week. Directors of the £13.6m Driven programme, a partially government-funded consortium, said it had “exceeded their initial plan” and was a significant step in confirming autonomous vehicles could operate in real-life situations in a large European city. Continue reading...

According to a new study, two-thumb texters are almost as fast as keyboard users. We take to the streets to see if the public are up to speedThe human thumb, being opposable, is a blessed thing: we can hold a pen, send a text or play thumb war as the mood takes us. Today’s digital natives will have learned to type before they crawl, and are capable of bashing out a “Hey, you up?” text faster than the brain can process that it is a bad decision. But not everyone is as lightning-fast: all of us know a one-finger typer, whether it is the co-worker who takes an eternity to reply to an email, or the beloved grandparent who pauses every few seconds.For the most part, we have typed faster on computer keyboards than phone screens – until now. A study of more than 37,000 volunteers from 160 countries has found that people can type almost as quickly on a screen as they can on a keyboard. Those who used two thumbs were able to type on average 38 words a minute - making them just 25% slower than the average computer keyboard user. We took to the streets to put the study to the test and find out how fast the general public could type the same three-sentence, 38-word phrase (lifted, of course, from a Guardian article on the UK economy). Move over Mavis Beacon: the keyboard is dead. Long live the phone screen. Continue reading...