Technology | The Guardian

Mark needs to replace a 10-year-old desktop computer on a budget. Is a refurbished model a good option?I’m considering buying a new general-purpose home computer for $200 [£142] or less, and I’d like a mini-tower that I can easily repair and upgrade.I will use it on the web, to scan photographs (with a flatbed scanner), and to watch video recordings from my trail cameras. I’d like to buy the minimum PC that can handle these tasks significantly faster than my 10-year-old Dell Dimension B110. I think I’d be happy with a 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo.Many people are familiar with the idea of “fleet cars” that have been bought or leased by large corporations and replaced after two or three years. They are cheap and have generally been well maintained, which makes them popular in the second hand market. There’s a similar market in “fleet computers”, which are usually recycled after three years and sold as refurbished PCs.

You can help make political advertising more transparent by recording ads and the associated targeting informationAre you Tasmanian, South Australian or Victorian and care about holding politicians to account? If so, we need your help.During the current and upcoming state election campaigns you may be targeted with political advertising on Facebook.

In backlash against latest update, users of the social app call on Snap Inc to change back to original designMore than 800,000 people have signed an online petition calling on Snapchat to revert its update back to the original design.The app’s latest redesign, which was released last week, focused on separating “media content” from that of “friends” among an array of other interface changes.

Google’s Susan Wojcicki joins chorus attacking Facebook, while social network says it doesn’t know what people ‘find meaningful’YouTube’s chief executive, Susan Wojcicki, joined a lineup of tech and media executives lambasting Facebook at a conference in California.Wojcicki, whose own company is facing intense criticism over its handling of shock-jock vlogger Logan Paul, suggested Facebook should head further down the path it started on when it announced plans in January to de-prioritise news content. Continue reading...

Sportswear retailer is joining up with Game Digital to create venues for hosting live matchesSports Direct shoppers will be invited to take a break from browsing for leisurewear to play video games, with the chain unveiling a partnership that will see Game Digital open pay-to-play concessions in its stores.Under the terms of the agreement, Sports Direct, owned by Mike Ashley, hopes to cash in on the growing popularity of eSports by clearing space in stores to host live matches between players battling it out in a variety of competitive video games.

Performers are increasingly attempting to limit online footage of gigs to prevent ‘ruining the ambience’Guns N’ Roses, Jarvis Cocker, Alicia Keys and the late Prince all made a stand against fans who filmed their gigs with phones. Two years ago American folk rock band the Lumineers even put the house lights up to shame those who were “ruining the ambience” of their concerts, urging their audience to “be more present with us”. For music-lovers it might seem a simple way to record a real-life encounter with an idol, but now the question of who controls the images of a live concert is becoming a big issue for performers.After Jack White, the former White Stripes frontman, decided last month to stop the use of smartphones at gigs, hip-hop superstar Kendrick Lamar, who launched his European tour in Dublin last week, is the latest high-profile performer to attempt to take charge of his image in the face of modern technology. Continue reading...

Robert Downey Jr used the entrepreneur as a role model for his part in the 2008 filmElon Musk is the archetypal serial entrepreneur, with a string of successes before the startups that would make him famous.Robert Downey Jr turned to Musk for help getting into character as Tony Stark for the 2008 film Iron Man. Musk’s enthusiastic embrace of technology for technology’s sake and his desire to push the limits of what was possible for private enterprise made him a close real-world analogue for Marvel’s billionaire arms dealer.

The pioneer penned his techno-utopian ‘Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace’ two decades ago. His ideals are at risk of going with him

British MPs criticise Google, Facebook and Twitter during fake news clash in WashingtonYouTube has said it had found no evidence of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum, but promised MPs it would conduct further investigations at a UK parliamentary committee hearing with social media company executives in Washington on Thursday.

Julia has a problem with her 14-year-old son’s use of Instagram and Gmail and would like to take control of his accountsWhy do social media sites such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook etc deem children ‘adults’ in the vast and dangerous world of technology? My 14-year-old is engaging in a toxic relationship with a girl on Instagram. I am not allowed access to his account as it is protected by their user privacy protection agreement. How can a mother have their child’s account removed?

Digital freedom fighter and founder of Electronic Frontier Foundation, who wrote lyrics for the Grateful Dead, died in his sleepJohn Perry Barlow, “visionary” internet pioneer, press freedom advocate and Grateful Dead lyricist, has died aged 70.Barlow was named as a Guardian “Open 20” fighter for internet freedom in 2012 because of his work to establish the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which defends online liberties. The organisation announced Barlowdied in his sleep on Wednesday morning. Continue reading...

A gathering of Silicon Valley alumni and Washington lobbyists warns of the links between tech addiction, anxiety, obesity and depressionThe leaders of Facebook should consider their own children when they make decisions that could harm millions of young people hooked on the social network, activists said on Wednesday.A gathering of Silicon Valley alumni and whistleblowers and Washington lobbyists in the US capital heard warnings of potential links between tech addiction and sleep disruption, poor academic performance, anxiety, depression, obesity, social isolation and suicide. Continue reading...

Loss of $675.4m announced day after Musk’s car sent into space in test of SpaceX rocketThe tech billionaire Elon Musk sent one of his Tesla electric cars into space yesterday, a day before the company that built it announced its biggest ever quarterly loss.Musk’s Tesla electric car and energy storage company lost $675.4m in the three months ending 31 December, the company announced on Thursday, compared with a loss of $121m for the same period last year.

Lawyers for self-driving car company Waymo play clip from Wall Street in court, as Travis Kalanick is accused of stealing rival’s ideasA scene from the 1987 movie Wall Street became a flashpoint in the trial in which Google’s driverless car spinoff Waymo accuses the ride-hailing company Uber of stealing trade secrets.“The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” said the lead character, Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, in a grainy YouTube video shown on Wednesday to a packed room in San Francisco’s federal court. The former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick watched from the stand, shifting in his seat. Continue reading...

Films depicting celebrities’ faces superimposed on to adult film actors using AI also banned from Gfycat, but not RedditTwitter and Pornhub have become the latest platforms to ban pornography made using AI-generated face-swap technology – known as “deepfakes” – as non-consensual porn.There has been an explosion in the creation of videos that use cutting-edge machine learning techniques to superimpose the faces of female celebrities on to explicit clips, due to the release of a desktop app that streamlines the process in January. Continue reading...

European Commission to investigate deal following requests from Austria, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Spain and SwedenApple’s purchase of music recognition service Shazam is to be reviewed by the European Commission following requests from seven countries fearing the deal may “adversely affect competition”.

As questionable currencies flourish alongside legitimate ones, investors are advised to think twice before jumping on the latest crazeEarly last month, the San Francisco-based software developer Rishab Hegde launched a cryptocurrency he called ponzicoin. Its website described “the world’s first legitimate Ponzi scheme” and encouraged people to buy and then “shill this coin heavily to your family and friends like a fucking sociopath”.The FAQs stated that ponzicoin was a joke and a scam with “Equifax-grade security”. But none of that stopped people from investing to the point where Hegde closed the cryptocurrency down, saying the joke had “gotten crazy out of hand”. Continue reading...

Day after man arrested, company says police advised that notifying affected customers sooner may have jeopardised the investigationCar-sharing company GoGet has received praise from New South Wales fraud detectives for being “proactive” following a data hack last year, despite waiting nearly seven months to advise customers.The company emailed users on Wednesday morning to apologise for the breach, a day after a 37-year-old man was arrested by the riot squad at Penrose, in the state’s southern highlands. Continue reading...

PlayStation 4, Xbox One; Capcom

The open-source ledger behind bitcoin is touted as revolutionary for everything from banking to health, but the jury is still outThe speculation around cryptocurrencies has obscured the fact that blockchain, the decentralised, open-source ledger that drives bitcoin, could radically change how ownership is verified.While the value of the main cryptocurrencies fluctuates, “blockchain” remains a lucrative buzzword that companies have found is a magnet for funding. But cutting through the hype, could blockchain technology really revolutionise the way anything from banking to education is run? Continue reading...

Open letter signed by more than 100 advocates warns of dangers social media poses to under 13s and asks Mark Zuckerberg to halt appMore than 110 child-health advocates have called on Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to pull the firm’s Messenger Kids app aimed at under 13s, warning of the dangers of social media for children.In an open letter led by the Boston-based Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, signed by doctors, educators and child health experts including baroness Susan Greenfield, warn that “younger children are simply not ready to have social media accounts”. Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg says local stories could improve civic engagement as company grapples with concerns over spreading misinformationMark Zuckerberg has said Facebook will begin focusing on promoting local news sources in people’s news feeds, the company’s latest change amid criticism that its algorithms prioritized misleading news and misinformation, influencing politics in the US and elsewhere.“Starting today, we’re going to show more stories from news sources in your local town or city,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post on Monday. “If you follow a local publisher or if someone shares a local story, it may show up higher in news feed.”

Tech giants are drawing political fire over fake news and Russian meddlingNicholas Terry understands the internet’s darker side better than most. A history lecturer at Exeter University, Terry is an expert on antisemitism and runs a blog examining Holocaust denial and its dissemination online.“You’ve got three separate phenomena converging,” he says. “One is the fake news stuff, promulgated by the likes of Facebook and Twitter, which is trying to promote specific false stories in real time for immediate impact; second, there’s the ideological bubble – people only reading leftwing or rightwing news sites; and then there’s this effort by fringe movements on Holocaust denial to make their websites look respectable and to hoodwink readers into thinking what they’re reading is OK.” Continue reading...

Banning yourself can have the perverse effect of making your phone more enticing. What you need to do is make it boringRecently, I bought a piece of digital technology to help me conquer my low-level addiction to digital technology. Yes, yes, I know this makes me sound like a sucker, no better than those techno-junkies who queue overnight at the Apple store for an early glimpse at the meaninglessness of their lives. But bear with me: Ditto, which costs about £30, is a thimble-sized contraption that clips to my belt and vibrates when I get texts or calls from specific people. So I can stash my phone in my bag, out of sight and reach, confident I’ll be contactable for, say, a baby emergency. (Or by the editor of Guardian Weekend. Obviously!) You can use the iPhone’s “do not disturb” feature to do something similar; but last year, researchers showed that just having a phone in your sightline impairs your cognitive capacities. By contrast, Ditto replicates all the secret joy of accidentally leaving your phone at home, with none of the accompanying panic.Readers even more curmudgeonly than I am may mutter that if I have such a tortured relationship with my phone, I should just get rid of it – downgrade to a dumbphone, maybe. Didn’t we manage fine before smartphones came along? The trouble is that smartphones, like most technology, aren’t simply bad. They’re worse: a diabolical mixture of bad and very good. I love receiving photos of the baby while I’m at work; I love FaceTiming with faraway friends; I just hate the compulsion to stare absently at the web every five minutes. That’s the smartphone’s whole trick: all those addictive apps are essentially parasites. Continue reading...

Couple who live in £1m London house raised more than £5,000 to pay vet bills for Welsh terrierThe chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi and his fashion designer wife have raised more than £5,000 to get their Instagram-star dog treated by a celebrity vet, after asking followers for donations on a crowdfunding website.The couple’s Welsh terrier, Edward Lear, has more than 10,000 followers on the social media site, and has been pictured in designer dogwear and at five-star hotels. Continue reading...

John has an old Sony Vaio PC that seems unlikely to receive a firmware update. Should he replace it?My Microsoft Surface Book is protected against the Meltdown and Spectre security flaws, but my Sony Vaio Pro remains vulnerable to Spectre. Both laptops run Windows 10 and have been updated via Windows Update. The Surface Book’s BIOS has also been updated by Microsoft, but there is no BIOS update for the Vaio – and, I suspect, for millions of other machines.What is the risk of continuing to run the Vaio with this known critical vulnerability? Is there another way to mitigate it? Or, in the end, do thousands of people have to dump otherwise good machines and buy new ones? John PiattIt’s too soon to say. Bear in mind that, so far, there are no known exploits for these vulnerabilities, so the current level of risk is low. Companies will try to defend against threats as and when they appear. In the short term, we’ll just have to see how well that goes.

Sundar Pichai tells Davos flawed tax system is to blame for EU countries missing out on revenueThe chief executive of Google has declared he is happy for his company to pay more tax, and called for the existing system to be reformed.Sundar Pichai told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the tax system needed to be reformed to address concerns that some companies were not paying their fair share. Continue reading...

‘Optical trap display’ projects graphics into the air, where they are visible from all anglesWe still don’t have flying cars, brain-computer interfaces, or an artificial intelligence (AI) you can hold a conversation with, but one classic science-fiction technology is on our doorstep: true 3D displays which are capable of projecting an image into “thin air”.A new paper in the journal Nature reports a breakthrough from a group of researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah: the first creation of a “free-space volumetric display”, capable of reproducing full-colour graphics floating in the air, visible from all angles. Continue reading...

Company’s delayed, £319 smart speaker pitched as music-first wireless speaker that can be voice-controlled via SiriApple’s delayed £319 HomePod smart speaker will finally be available to buy on Friday in the UK, US and Australia.The 17.8cm tall HomePod is pitched as a music-first wireless speaker that can be controlled by voice using Apple’s Siri assistant, which can also set timers, reminders, check the weather and control smart home devices. Continue reading...

Car insurers have been accused of discriminating against people with Hotmail accounts. But how did the once-popular address end up with a bad rep?Admiral car insurance has been accused of putting up premiums for people with Hotmail addresses, claiming that they are more likely to crash. It would be relatively easy for Hotmail users to get their premiums back down again by changing to a more respectable Gmail address, but unfortunately none of them will be able to, because they don’t know how to use the internet.In the beginning, we all got a Hotmail address to use as an alternative to a work address, some time between discovering email and realising your boss could read them all (circa 1996). The downfall started – and this will be a curiosity to digital natives – when people started to pay for their personal email account. Because it was free, Hotmail attracted all the people who didn’t want to pay or didn’t know you could and the brand thereby became tainted by them, this being the era when paying for stuff still conveyed connoisseurship, rather than cluelessness. It didn’t help that there was nothing sacred about a Hotmail account, because you could just get another one, so there were a lot of sillynames.featuringrabbits@hotmail.com. Plus it was global, so you could never get your own name unless you added nine digits after it, like a Russian trollbot. Soon, it was all basically teenagers and people who needed a second email account for their double life. Continue reading...

Corporate buses, which ferry workers from San Francisco to its Silicon Valley headquarters, have become symbols of gentrificationAt least five buses used to transport Apple employees to the company’s headquarters have had their windows smashed by what is suspected to be pellet guns during the last week.The first window was shattered on the evening of Friday 12 January, as the shuttle bus travelled from the company campus back into San Francisco. Three more were hit on Tuesday morning, followed by another suspected attack on Tuesday evening, according to an email sent to Apple staff and seen by the Guardian. Continue reading...

While the celebrity YouTuber remains able to monetize clips, vloggers supporting marginalized groups lament yet another barrier to successYouTube changed Erin Armstrong’s life. The transgender vlogger joined in 2006, posting videos about her transition and connecting with trans people across the globe, building a community that once seemed unimaginable to her.But last year, the Google-owned video platform started flagging some of her videos as unsuitable to advertisers, costing her much-needed revenue – and this week, the site emailed her even more hurtful news: her channel is now considered too small to be eligible for ads, and under new rules, she will be kicked out of YouTube’s partner program altogether. Continue reading...

Bitcoin dropped a further $2,000 in value, leading the general slide across cryptocurrency markets as investor confidence waiversCryptocurrencies continued their sharp tumble on Wednesday as bitcoin dropped by over 16% as continued fears of regulation from Russia and China dent investor confidence.The price of the world’s biggest and best known cryptocurrency fell $2,000 to as low as $10,000, on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange, for the first time since November, and down from lows of $11,200 on Monday and $12,000 at 2pm GMT Tuesday. Continue reading...

In the first episode of our four-part series, Jordan Erica Webber asks whether our digital selves are owned by tech firms in a new form of slavery?Subscribe and review on iTunes, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast or on your favourite podcasting app and join the discussion on Facebook and TwitterIs the internet broken? And has the utopian 90s net been replaced by digital feudalism, where a few powerful entities wield control over all of us digital serfs? In this series, Jordan Erica Webber looks at internet-enabled dystopia, and how even the technology designed to do good can end up causing harm. Continue reading...

Companies pivoting to, or just showing an interest in, cryptocurrencies and associated technologies have resulted in a sudden burst in share priceKodak hit headlines this week when the company announced a plan to launch “photo-centric cryptocurrency to empower photographers and agencies to take greater control in image rights management”. In other words, the venerable camera company is getting in on the bitcoin hype.Shares in Kodak, which had been largely flat for the previous three months and steadily declining for the five years before that, more than doubled in the following 24 hours, as the company insisted that it was not simply pumping out “hot buzzwords”. Continue reading...

The billionaire investor and his longtime manager Charlie Munger, two of the world’s most successful investors, say they’d never invest in cryptocurrenciesBillionaire investor Warren Buffett said Wednesday that he would never invest in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, and predicted the wildly popular assets are in for a fall.Related: World's richest 500 see their wealth increase by $1tn this year Continue reading...

The irony of the partial power cut at an event designed to showcase the latest electronic advances did not escape social or industry mediaThe digital economy’s big annual trade show, CES, suffered a brief, disruptive plunge into darkness on Wednesday because of a power outage that the event’s organisers blamed on heavy rain.

UK political system vulnerable to anti-democratic meddling via social media and ‘possibly illicit’ campaign funding, report saysRussia’s attempts to influence British democracy and the potential vulnerability of parts of the UK political system to anti-democratic meddling during the EU referendum have been detailed in a report prepared by the US Senate.The report by Democrats on the Senate foreign relations committee, titled Putin’s asymmetric assault on democracy in Russia and Europe: implications for US national security, pinpoints the way in which UK campaign finance laws do not require disclosure of political donations if they are from “the beneficial owners of non-British companies that are incorporated in the EU and carry out business in the UK”. Continue reading...

Information Commissioner’s Office fines company £400,000 for ‘concerning’ security issues following investigation of hack of 3m customers’ dataCarphone Warehouse has been fined £400,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office for a series of “systemic failures” uncovered following a data breach in 2015.The ICO described the “number of distinct and significant inadequacies in the security arrangements” of Carphone Warehouse as “striking”, and said that it was “ particularly concerning that a number of the inadequacies related to basic, commonplace measures”. Continue reading...

Exemption added after researchers said efforts to demonstrate inadequate anonymisation could fall foul of lawThe government is to amend the data protection bill to protect security researchers who work to uncover abuses of personal data, quelling fears that the bill could accidentally criminalise legitimate research.The move follows a Guardian report on the concerns, and has been welcomed by one of the researchers who raised the alarm. “I am very happy with the amendments,” said Lukasz Olejnik, an independent cybersecurity and privacy researcher. Continue reading...

Fines totalling more than £150,000 handed down over use of private detectives to illegally obtain private banking recordsAn insurance firm and two senior figures connected with the company have been given record fines for using private detectives to illegally obtain the private banking records of a businessman they were investigating.The fines, totalling more than £150,000, were described by an official watchdog as the highest ever imposed under the Data Protection Act for unlawfully acquiring personal information. Continue reading...

A hacking takedown of computer systems that capture and organise our lives is made possible because we applauded technology’s potential without adequately assessing the pitfallsThe discovery of hardware bugs in almost every computer, laptop, tablet and smartphone is evidence of the imperfect foresight human actions are apt to have. The flaws – nicknamed Meltdown and Spectre – are so fundamental that they could allow hackers to steal computers’ most secure secrets. In seeking to speed up microprocessors and diffuse them into every part of modern life, chipmakers wanted to exploit the potential of technology but paid too little heed to the pitfalls.The problems are rooted in the trade-off between speed and security. Computing capacity has doubled every 18 months, in line with Moore’s law. This has allowed the digitisation of everything: every second today 2.6m emails are sent, 64,533 Google searches made and 7,885 opinions tweeted. Processors were optimised for performance, without basic questions being asked about whether their design was secure. It turns out they are not. One error can be “patched” – but will slow down machines by up to 30%, which makes a mockery of the need for speed. The other is so foundational that a complete re-imagining of processors will be needed. In the meantime we have to live with the risk of a hacking takedown of computer systems we let capture, organise and optimise our lives. Continue reading...

Exclusive: former employee alleges that women hired to work as preschool teachers in the company’s childcare center were paid lower salaries than men with fewer qualifications doing same jobGoogle, which has been accused of systematically underpaying female engineers and other workers, is now facing allegations that it discriminated against women who taught employees’ children at the company’s childcare center.A former employee, Heidi Lamar, is alleging in a complaint that female teachers were paid lower salaries than men with fewer qualifications doing the same job. Continue reading...

Developers scramble to fix bug within chips made in the last decade that will affect millions of computers running Windows, macOS and LinuxA security flaw has been found in virtually all Intel processors that will require fixes within Windows, macOS and Linux, according to reports.Developers are currently scrambling behind the scenes to fix the significant security hole within the Intel chips, with patches already available within some versions of Linux and some testing versions of Windows, although the fixes are expected to significantly slow down computers. Continue reading...

Here be dragons … and grog-swilling pirates, armed cultists, dino-beasts and a teenage supersleuth called Jenny LeClue. We preview spring’s biggest releases, from Ni no Kuni 2 to the return of Red Dead Redemption Continue reading...

As the arctic ice melts, smartphones eat our brains and the ghost of Brexit future stalks the land, it’s getting harder and harder to believe in SantaThere is much we can learn from the ancient traditions of Winterval, each culture’s festive myths and rituals being equally valid, and equally instructive, irrespective of their veracity or worth.Upon the solstice night in Latveria, for example, Pappy Puffklap leaves a dried clump of donkey excrement on the breakfast table of each home. Is this so very different from the wise kings bringing the infant Christ sealed flagons of foul-smelling gas, the divine in harmony with the physical at its most pungent? Continue reading...

Instant delivery ideas for those in need of emergency gifts, from Netflix and Spotify subscriptions to games, apps, movies and vanity URLsThe time has probably passed for Christmas delivery, and the shops are going to be rammed, so here’s a list of gifts that can be bought and delivered instantly from the comfort of the sofa in case you’ve forgotten someone on Christmas Eve.

Schmidt, who played an integral role in Google’s rise to power, will remain on Alphabet’s board and serve as a technical adviserEric Schmidt will step down as the executive chairman of Alphabet’s board of directors, the company announced on Thursday.Schmidt will remain on Alphabet’s board and serve as a technical adviser to the company, whose holdings include Google, YouTube, Nest and Waymo. Continue reading...

Under ‘unprecedented’ partnership, users will be able to upload videos containing licensed music on Facebook, Instagram and OculusUniversal Music Group is to become the first major music company to license its recorded music and publishing catalogues for use on Facebook, Instagram and virtual reality platform Oculus in a global, multi-year agreement.The deal, described as “unprecedented” in a statement from Universal, will license the content for video and “other social experiences”. Continue reading...