Technology | The Guardian

What’s the difference between a game that’s compulsive and one that’s merely fun? After an attempt to cut game time, Destiny 2: Forsaken lets players decideOnline sci-fi shooter Destiny, released in 2014, had a strange effect on some of its players. Unlike World of Warcraft, or most other games that people play every day, it didn’t have hundreds of hours’ worth of different planets to visit, enemies to defeat or characters to get to know. You could play through the entirety of Destiny’s story in 10 hours; beyond that, it offered only a small selection of daily “strike” missions and an arena to challenge other players in shootouts. Yet people played for hours every day. A significant portion of players spent a thousand hours or more with the game over two or three years, as recorded by the ironically titled WastedOnDestiny.com.Aside from the draw of spending time with friends, this compulsive factor stemmed from Destiny’s loot system. Sure, you’d be playing the exact same missions, strikes and raids, in the same places, shooting the same enemies. But every time you did, there was a small chance you’d get lucky and score a covetable weapon or piece of armour. Continue reading...

Tech giant unveils new gadgets at California bash, including biggest iPhone yet and Apple Watch with range of health features

iPhone XS has much-improved camera and bigger battery – and price tag – while Apple Watch Series 4 focuses on heart-rate and health

The Melbourne iteration of the world’s biggest online video conference unites ‘creators’ with their ‘community’ for a flurry of pep talks, panels and star-studded performances“I was such a good salesperson, and now I just sell myself!”

iPhone, PC, Mac, PS4; Ben Esposito/Annapurna Interactive

Tech company invests £200m in Hullavington site to double vehicle-testing capacitySir James Dyson, the billionaire inventor and Brexit backer, has unveiled expansion plans to accommodate more than 2,000 workers at his Wiltshire research facility, more than doubling capacity for electric-vehicle testing.Coming despite severe warnings over lost jobs and investment from no-deal Brexit, his technology company is spending about £200m to expand the testing facility on a former second world war airfield at Hullavington, near Malmesbury in the west of England. Continue reading...

Rematch already arranged after fight between vlogging stars declared a draw after six roundsThe boxing match between YouTubers KSI and Logan Paul was set to be, at least according to the hype, “the biggest event in internet history”. But in the end, it may have all been the prequel to another event, as the main fight ended in a draw in front of 20,000 people at the Manchester Arena.

The original was made famous by The Matrix, and some might want to drop this reboot out of the nearest window tooThe new Nokia 8110 4G is the latest nostalgia trip from HMD Global, but is it more than just a remake of that “banana phone” from the Matrix?HMD had a hit on its hands with the new Nokia 3310 from last year, which was a surprisingly charming dumbphone that cost slightly more than other basic Nokias because of the name. Continue reading...

Officials have been slow to update machines and secure data – and the political climate could hurt voter confidenceSixteen months ago, Marilyn Marks was just another political junkie watching a high-profile congressional election on her laptop when she saw something she found abnormal and alarming.The date was 18 April 2017, and the election was in Georgia’s sixth congressional district, where the Democrats were hoping to pull off an upset victory against a crowded Republican field in the wake of Tom Price’s (short-lived) elevation to the Trump cabinet as health and human services secretary. Continue reading...

From fashionistas to popular scientists, YouTube’s top video stars are crumbling under the relentless pressure of producing new content for the siteWhen Lucy Moon sat down with her therapist to discuss why she was feeling so low, she was on top of the world. A burgeoning career as a YouTuber was in mid-bloom: her subscriber count – an important metric on the site, and a sign of a creator’s popularity – was booming, and offers of work and brand tie-ins were rolling in. But all was not well. She wasn’t happy. The workload was rising; the pressure to be perfect in front of the camera was crushing. And the therapist was shocked.“She was like: ‘I cannot believe you think this is normal, to be running this kind of operation for the first time with no career support,’” says Moon, a 23-year-old beauty-and-lifestyle YouTuber with more than 319,000 subscribers. “I meet so many YouTubers who say that.” Continue reading...

At Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, researcher says theoretical threat to ships, planes and military is ‘no longer theoretical’The satellite communications that ships, planes and the military use to connect to the internet are vulnerable to hackers that, in the worst-case scenario, could carry out “cyber-physical attacks”, turning satellite antennas into weapons that operate, essentially, like microwave ovens.

Jack Dorsey refuses to follow Apple, Facebook and YouTube in banning Jones, saying he will be guided by principles rather than pressureTwitter founder Jack Dorsey has defended his company’s decision to continue publishing the controversial tweets of the American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, saying Jones’s content “hasn’t violated our rules”.Facebook, Apple, YouTube and Spotify have all banned Jones’ from their platforms, saying he promoted hate speech and violence, but Twitter had allowed Jones to continue posting on the platform. Dorsey said the company was committed to promoting “a healthy conversational environment” – which included Jones.

Epic Games bypasses the app store to offer its hugely successful online shooting game via its websiteOnline shooting game Fortnite: Battle Royale will be available on Android phones this month, but it will not be available on the Google Play store, the official app store for Android devices. Instead, developer Epic Games will make the game available for download via a dedicated installer on its website, avoiding the 30% revenue share that Google would get to host the title on its Play store.

So we’ve gone off voice calls yet spend hours glued to our phones. But it’s simply that the rules of conversation have been redrawn in the age of WhatsApp, Snapchat and emojisNews of the un-newsy kind this week, fresh from an Ofcom study designed to confirm a belief in our worst selves: we are a nation addicted to smartphones but are repelled by the idea of making or taking voice calls.Is this the death of conversation? Not quite, but it’s certainly more than a blip in the cultural history of communication: in 2017, for the first time, the number of voice calls – remember, those things you did with your actual voice on your actual phone – fell in the UK. Meanwhile, internet addiction keeps growing, presumably because we haven’t quite worked out what to do with all those hours we’re saving on talking. Continue reading...

Guardian investigation reveals numerous cases of Amazon workers being treated in ways that leave them homeless, unable to work or bereft of income after workplace accidentsVickie Shannon Allen, 49, started working at Amazon as a counter in a fulfillment warehouse at Haslet, Texas, in May 2017. At first, like many employees, Allen was excited by the idea of working for one of the fastest growing corporations in the world. That feeling dissipated quickly after a few months.Related: Amazon posts record $2.5bn profit fueled by ad and cloud businesses Continue reading...

President tweeted that the newspaper had ‘gone crazy’ against him and claimed it lobbies on behalf of the Bezos-owned AmazonDonald Trump has renewed his attacks on the world’s richest man and his arch nemesis, Jeff Bezos, railing against the Bezos-owned Washington Post and Amazon, the original source of the entrepreneur’s $150bn fortune.Related: Why does Trump hate Jeff Bezos: is it about power or money? Continue reading...

Shares dropped almost 5% after the automaker was reported to have asked US suppliers for refunds, unnerving some investorsTesla took another financial hit on Monday, with shares in the company dropping almost 5% after the electric automaker was reported to have asked some US suppliers to return payments to the money-losing company.The disclosure was contained in a memo sent last week by a global supply manager and obtained by the Wall Street Journal. In it, the manager described the payments as essential to Tesla’s operation. Continue reading...

New policy to tackle content that could fuel violence may be well-meaning, but the complexity of the task is mind-bogglingFacebook has been grappling with its role in spreading false news and disinformation for a few years, but a spate of mob violence in India, Sri Lanka and Myanmar have spurred the social network into a knee-jerk policy change.Until now, Facebook has dealt with disinformation by making it less prominent in people’s news feeds. This week, the company announced it would start to delete inaccurate or misleading information created or shared “with the purpose of contributing to or exacerbating violence or physical harm”. Continue reading...

Accusation directed on Twitter at Vern Unsworth, who called Tesla CEO’s offer of ‘mini-sub’ to help rescuers a ‘PR stunt’

When Jawbone liquidated its assets, its wristbands became useless without companion appFitness trackers made by the defunct wearables company Jawbone were still on sale at Amazon, Selfridges and Groupon more than a month after they were rendered useless by the closure of a companion app, according to research by the consumer magazine Which.The Jawbone UP2, first released in 2015, is a wrist-worn fitness tracker. It connects to iOS and Android phones through Bluetooth, and uploads its data to a companion app, also branded UP. But in 2017, after a run of bad financial results, the company liquidated its assets, and earlier this year it disabled the app entirely. Continue reading...

Firm is investigating reports that default messaging app sent pictures without consentSamsung is investigating reports that its default text messaging app on the Galaxy S8 and S9 smartphones is sending photos to random contacts without permission.

The gadgets inspired by Back to the Future Part II’s floating skateboards have failed to deliverWe could start by saying “they” didn’t promise us hoverboards. People want hoverboards because they saw one in the disappointing sequel Back to the Future Part II . But that doesn’t mean people haven’t tried to make them. Like other colourful retrofuturist fantasies, hoverboards were a lustmotif that spoke to a whole generation in the way that flying cars and jetpacks did to baby boomers.Problem No 1: how would this thing hover? We have four choices: some type of thrust, a cushion of air, maglev or magic. Continue reading...

Company tells Congress it provided Nike, Spotify, a dating app and other services with special rights to informationFacebook gave 61 businesses including Nike, Spotify, UPS and dating app Hinge special rights to access user data after blocking such access more broadly.In written responses to the US Congress on its operations, the social network revealed it granted numerous extensions to access a user’s public profile as well as some data from their friends. Continue reading...

This week’s vote on the proposed EU copyright directive is not about censorship but support for creators and usersAfter three years of debate, one of the most controversial pieces of legislation to come before the European parliament is going to the vote on Thursday (Brussels vote may force YouTube to pay billions extra in fees, 2 July).It is about copyright, and specifically about the rights of creators versus those of the internet giants, and whether or not the internet functions as a fair and efficient marketplace. If we cave to the pressure of these giants, the future of our creative industry is at serious risk. Continue reading...

Firm builds 5,000 in a week but critics are sceptical over whether feat can be replicatedTesla has finally hit its weekly target production rate of 5,000 of its “mass-market” Model 3 electric car thanks to a big tent.Related: Tesla factory to be investigated over safety concerns Continue reading...

The terrifying extent of online government surveillance is laid bare in the Orwell game series. How complicit will you be when put in control?In March this year, it was revealed that the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had obtained data collected from tens of thousands of Facebook accounts to build a system that could create individual profiles and sway voters with personalised political advertisements. It proved to be another worrying example of the way online information is used by a system we have no knowledge of; a reminder of people’s complete lack of awareness of how their personal information is used and manipulated by powerful institutions.Orwell, an ongoing video game series, makes obvious what is hidden: that mass surveillance and data harvesting can be used in sinister ways that go further than just advertising profiles, to regulate and govern our behaviour in ways we don’t realise. It asks players to question systems of surveillance while giving an insight into our complicity within these structures. Continue reading...

For families who like to travel in style, few cars will be closer to the top of your wishlistLexus RX 450hL

Forecasting is more accurate than ever, but mobile apps can still disagree wildly. What causes the difference – and which one is best?It was a tale of two storms. The first consisted of the rain and thunder forecast for Bournemouth by the BBC weather app on the Saturday spring bank holiday. The second came when the first failed to materialise and a tourism manager in the town complained that visitors who stayed away could have come after all and enjoyed sunshine and blue skies.This opportunity to rage at inaccurate forecasting, bash the BBC and highlight the grievances of small businesses did not go to waste. For the Sun, it was a “blunderstorm”. The Mail gave voice to furious social media users whose weekend had been ruined by “crap forecasting” and “total incompetence”. The Spectator even managed to use the row to take pot shots at climate-change predictions. Continue reading...

The consequences of the technological revolution may be even more frightening than we thoughtI suspect your enjoyment – or otherwise – of James Bridle’s New Dark Age will depend very much on whether you’re a glass half-empty, or a glass exactly-filled-to-the-halfway-mark-by-microprocessor-controlled-automatic-pumping-systems sort of a person. I like to think that while I may have misgivings about much of what the current technological revolution is visiting on us, I yet manage to resist that dread ascription “luddite”. It’s one Bridle also wishes to avoid; but such is the pessimism about the machines that informs his argument, that his calls for a new “partnership” between them and us seem like special pleading. As futile, in fact, as a weaver believing that by smashing a Jacquard loom he’ll stop the industrial revolution in its tracks.If we’re in ignorance of what our robots are doing, how can we know if we’re being harmed? Continue reading...

The payments service raised no alarm bells when a 17-year-old ‘betrayed’ his parents by using his father’s bank cardThis is a cautionary tale that will be of particular interest to the parents of teenagers who, having grown up in a digital age, are over-confident in their use of technology and underestimate the potential dangers of the internet.My son David is 17, and technology has always been part of his life. As a consequence, nothing fazes him about computers or the internet. He spends most of his time on his computer, primarily for gaming (though he has allegedly studied for his final year school exams, too). He is also (if I’m being honest) a bit immature for his years. And he has just demonstrated extraordinary naivety, courtesy of PayPal. Continue reading...

Mobs beat three people to death in three separate incidents in state of TripuraAuthorities in north-eastern India have cut internet access after mobs beat three people to death in lynchings sparked by rumours spread on smartphones, officials have said.They were the latest in a string of more than 25 similar killings in recent months across India, according to press reports, which have been carried out iafter false information was spread on the messaging service WhatsApp. Continue reading...

Premium cable network Showtime announced the series, which will hope to avoid the fate of previous flawed adaptation attemptsBlockbusting video game Halo is to be adapted into a 10-part live-action series, which will aim to succeed where a doomed film project and a poorly received web series failed.In an announcement, David Nevins, the president and CEO of premium cable network Showtime, creators of the show, said that it would focus on “an epic 26th-century conflict between humanity and an alien threat known as the Covenant”. Continue reading...

In June 2018, the World Health Organization released its latest version of the ICD-11. Among the new mental health disorders? Gaming disorderSubscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, AudioBoom, Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook, Twitter or email us at chipspodcast@theguardian.com.The World Health Organization has been working on an update for its diagnostic manual, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). In June 2018 it released its latest version of the ICD-11 for implementation. Continue reading...

The recent Oscar winner lends his voice to a moronic thriller about a woman trapped by artificial intelligence, which sits alongside other genre missteps on the streaming platformIt’s a long and noble Hollywood tradition: an actor scores the coveted Academy Award at long last, and then promptly squanders that industry cachet on the most mortifying work of their entire career. Mere days after picking up a statuette for Boyhood, Patricia Arquette was off solving computer-crimes on CSI: Cyber. Eddie Redmayne took home the gold for The Theory of Everything, and celebrated by bellowing his way through an utterly incomprehensible turn in Jupiter Ascending. A decade and a half out from his win for The Pianist, and Adrien Brody is still doing this.Related: Science friction: can Netflix figure out its blockbuster problem? Continue reading...

Over-complicated, storage-filling apps can slow us down. Instragram Lite is the latest brand to shed unwanted features and help us work betterInstagram has become the latest app to get the so-called lite treatment – a stripped-back, cut-down reaction to the increasingly over-complicated, bloat-filled apps we’re being asked to swallow on a daily basis from the big app developers.

System would allow Facebook to identify what adults and children are watching based on ambient noise

Martin works for a large company that uses G Suite where the tech team can accesses employees’ emails. Can he prevent this?I work for a large company and use the Gmail set up for my account. As a senior manager, I have many confidential conversations internally and externally via email.I have found out that one of the tech guys accesses employee’s emails when requested to carry out checks by the CEO. Do they have the right to do this? I think it creates a feeling of mistrust and insecurity. Can I lock my account so only I can access it? MartinHistorically, the assumption has always been that companies own and can access mail used for company business. When I was a manager, I dictated letters to a secretary who typed them and filed copies. I never reached a level where these filing cabinets were locked and inaccessible, but they contained nothing of personal interest. Continue reading...

#SelfCare packs a ‘tend and befriend’ strategy to appeal to players who find combat titles a turn-off. Its designers, Brie Code and Eve Thomas, make the case for staying in bed all dayEve Thomas, an artist and magazine editor from Montreal, would not call herself a gamer. She played video games on a Mac as a child and enjoyed Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii, but most modern video games don’t appeal. “I don’t like the stress of dying,” she says. “And every single advert for most games presumed me to be a guy. They would presume a certain gaze. They didn’t feel like they were speaking to me.”About three years ago, Thomas got in contact with game programmer Brie Code at Ubisoft, one of the world’s biggest games publishers, hoping to profile her for a magazine. Code had been spending a lot of time thinking about why it was that the video games she loved were failing to appeal to her friends and, increasingly, to her. “I was getting bored with video games,” she says. “I thought it was a problem with me, that I was just growing up and less interested in them. But it wasn’t just me. Everyone at work was pretending they were into all the latest things coming out but later, at the bar, they would admit they barely played games any more.” Continue reading...

PS4, Xbox One, PC; Dontnod/Square Enix

Users frustrated by length of the outage and lack of updates from Google about glitchGoogle devices and apps have experienced serious outages that lasted for more than 12 hours and affected millions of users.Related: What is Google doing with AI? Chips with Everything podcast Continue reading...

Tom Edwards was thrilled to hear the CEO was a fan of his work, until he saw Tesla using a copy without permission

The military has suffered from austerity and the world is a dangerous place, but that doesn’t mean the case for higher defence spending needs no interrogationIt is easier to assert that Britain needs a modern military capability than it is to say what that means. The existence of dangers – from terrorism and cyberwarfare to nuclear proliferation and a pattern of Russian provocations – is beyond question. But to identify a threat is not the same as knowing how to handle it and, since the imagination can always conjure a worst-case scenario, the shopping list of desirable hardware can be long and very expensive.But resources are finite; compromise is inevitable. Military chiefs always want bigger budgets, and ministers, keen to show voters that they take no chances with national security, are reluctant to contradict the khaki lobby. Gavin Williamson, the defence secretary, has gone a step further, noisily demanding cash from the prime minister and the chancellor. Continue reading...

The new, cheaper, more compact Sonos soundbar has full-range, room-filling sound, wifi and smart speaker functionality with built-in AlexaThe Beam is the new, more compact and cheaper soundbar from multi-room audio specialists Sonos, which promises to be a great one-box upgrade for your TV sound, with Alexa and smart speaker functionality built in.

Facebook will not build its own aircraft due to aerospace companies’ competitionFacebook is scrapping its plans to build a high-altitude solar-powered drone that would have delivered internet access to the developing world.The drone, named Aquila by the company, was initially created by British aerospace engineer Andrew Cox, whose company Ascenta was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $20m (£15m). It was folded into Facebook’s Internet.org project, which had a stated goal of “connecting the whole world”, and was intended to be used to fly at a higher altitude than commercial planes, relaying laser-based internet signals down to base-stations on the ground. Continue reading...

John Lord says doing so would be ‘completely illegal’ and the telco would not flout Australian lawsHuawei would refuse to hand over data on Australian users to China because complying with such an order would be “completely illegal”, its Australian chairman has claimed.John Lord made the comment at the National Press Club on Wednesday, an outing in which he struggled to explain the requirements of Chinese law and to account for security assessments that have contributed to a hardening attitude to Huawei taking part in the build of the 5G network in Australia. Continue reading...

With Google’s AI assistant able to make phone calls and androids populating households in games and films, the line between machine and man is getting scarily blurred

Ride-hailing service impresses judge with sweeping changes to its practicesUber will be able to continue operating in London, after a court decided the ride-hailing firm should be awarded a new 15-month probationary licence, after being told of sweeping changes to its practices.The ride-hailing firm’s future in one of its biggest global markets had been in jeopardy after Transport for London ruled last September that it was not “fit and proper” to hold a private hire vehicles operator licence. Continue reading...

Apple’s new faster update with anti-smartphone addiction features is now available to test for the iPhone 5S or newerApple has released the public beta version of the much anticipated free iOS 12 software update for iPhones and iPads, which means those eager to try it before anyone else can install it right now.

Fans are great, but when it gets really hot all they do is push warm air around. These seven gadgets aim to cool you down without air conditioningThe British summer is a cruel mistress. It’s either dank, grey and raining, or so hot you practically melt on the way to work. An umbrella takes care of the former, but it’s difficult to stay cool in the heat.When a fan just doesn’t cut it, or simply isn’t practical, here are some of the best gadgets to keep the sweat at bay during work, rest and play. Continue reading...

Watchdogs reveal more data protection complaints and increase in breach notificationsThe first month of GDPR has seen a sharp increase in the number of complaints to regulators across Europe, showing strong public interest in the new rules.The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) told the Guardian it has seen a rise in breach notifications from organisations, as well as more data protection complaints following the activation of the law. Continue reading...