Technology | The Guardian

Give the people what they want: my pitch for how Twitter should host lengthy contributions without sacrificing brevityIn urban planning, there is the concept of a “desire path”.

Company says trial move of allowing some tweeters to have double-length character counts is to be rolled out to everyoneTwitter’s trial of a 280-character tweet limit is to be universally expanded, the social media network has announced.The move comes after a limited experiment which began in September to see if a larger character count reduced “cramming” and led to users better expressing themselves. Continue reading...

With millennials increasingly preferring to message, it won’t be long before the call becomes a pursuit solely for cranks who like the sound of their own voiceIn the opening scene of Channel 4’s brilliant new comedy-drama series The End of the F***ing World, lead character and latent rage vessel Alyssa snaps when a friend sends her an instant messages using her smartphone as the pair sit facing each other at a table. Seconds later her phone is lying in pieces on the floor. Alyssa, however, is an anomaly. Verbal communication is on the way out, and nowhere more than on the telephone.Without us really noticing it, the phone call has been slowly fading out over the past few years, and a new survey by Ofcom shows that only 15% of 16 to 24-year-olds consider it the most important method of communication, compared with 36% who prefer instant messaging. Continue reading...

‘Out of date’ list of terms associated with explicit content blamed for blocking of search keywordTwitter has apologised for blocking the word “bisexual” from search results, saying that it was wrongly included in an “out of date” list of terms associated with explicit content.The company says the extent of the block was a “technical issue”, which will be fixed in the next day, adding that some terms in particular were “incorrectly included”. Continue reading...

The deactivation of @realDonaldTrump – apparently by a rogue employee – prompted much online mirth but raised concern about more sinister possibilitiesFor 11 hushed minutes, much of the world got to read the words they had waited to see since last November: “@realDonaldTrump does not exist”.It wasn’t fake news. It wasn’t even a glitch. Twitter pulled the plug on the hyperactive president on Thursday evening.

MIT researchers managed to confuse artificial intelligence into classifying a reptile as a firearm, posing questions about the future of AI securityIf it is the shape of a turtle, the size of a turtle, and has the patterning of a turtle, it’s probably a turtle. So when artificial intelligence confidently declares it’s a gun instead, something’s gone wrong.But that’s what researchers from MIT’s Labsix managed to trick Google’s object recognition AI into thinking, they revealed in a paper published this week. Continue reading...

Urban leaders must reject the race to the bottom that these scrambles to please corporations generate – as 19th-century mayors did during the rise of capitalism

Australian government employees also hit by breach after third-party contractor misconfigures form of cloud storageThe personal details of more than 4,000 government employees have been exposed in a massive data breach of 50,000 staff records from various companies across Australia.

Meanwhile, Malcolm Turnbull’s Sydney home is not connected to the network, despite it being available in his streetThe consumer watchdog will review the standard of service NBN Co delivers to retailers amid an influx of customer complaints about connecting to the network.The announcement came on the same day a Senate committee heard Malcolm Turnbull’s private Sydney home is not connected to the national broadband network, despite it being available in his street. Continue reading...

Ads released by US lawmakers appear to have targeted both liberals and conservatives on hot-button issues and attempted to sow discord during electionUS lawmakers have publicly released a selection of Facebook ads bought by Russian operatives and a list of imposter Twitter accounts, revealing how foreign actors sought to sow division among American citizens.The ads and Twitter profiles appeared to target liberals and conservatives on a range of hot-button topics, including police brutality, immigration, race relations, Islamophobia and LGBT rights. Continue reading...

The 20th feature-length promo tool for the Pokémon phenomenon is a reboot, all about the very first meeting of Ash and likable company mascot PikachuThe – get this – 20th feature-length promotional tool for the media-spanning collectibles phenomenon turns out to be a reboot of the series entire. We are returned to the very first meeting between 10-year-old everykid Ash and totemic cat-bug-baby creature Pikachu, thereby allowing the rules of the game to be explained to a whole new generation with disposable income to squander.As rebranding exercises cinemagoers are expected to underwrite go, I Choose You! forms a modest improvement on those headachy spinoffs that bedevilled the world around the last millennium. Though the Poké-matches rely on generic, TV-standard animation and become repetitive, occasional flourishes (some black-and-white backstory, a computer-assisted bad dream) suggest that those responsible may some day make art once they’re done bolstering a leisure conglomerate’s stock options. Continue reading...

Japanese firm looks to rekindle its innovative spirit with reboot of pioneering robot pet after nearly a decade on holdPets are great, but in our modern hectic lives it’s increasingly difficult to give them the love and attention they deserve without paying someone else to do it. But what if you never needed to feed them, walk them or worry about them tearing up the house? Maybe that’s why Sony is bringing its robotic dog Aibo back from the dead.The Japanese electronics firm, once a pioneer in home robotics, announced that after more than a decade its robot canine pal will return to shelves with artificial intelligence-infused upgrades. Continue reading...

The company’s Photos app includes AI that can recognise thousands of search terms. Should we worry that one of those is ‘brassiere’?Don’t freak out, but your iPhone knows all about your underwear selfies. On Monday, a viral tweet led to thousands of users discovering that the Photos app, on Apple’s iOS and macOS operating systems, knows what a bra looks like – and lets you search for it.Apple being Apple, it’s vaguely classy, of course: the app will only give responses for “brassiere”. But type that into the search bar and there, in all their glory, are likely to be a fair few pics of people – maybe you – in various states of undress. Continue reading...

Waymo’s vehicles may not have the cool quotient of Tesla’s Model S, but they manage to navigate a minefield of potential accidentsOf all my recurring anxiety dreams, my least favorite is the one where I’m in a car. It always begins with me driving, but eventually I realize that for some reason I’m sitting in the back seat. My arms can’t reach the steering wheel, my legs can’t reach the pedals, and I’m stuck in a spiral of terror, careening around turns and accelerating toward obstacles until, gasping, I wake up.This is a bit like the passenger experience in Waymo’s self-driving cars. You climb into the back seat of a minivan, and watch in awe – or horror – as the wheel turns itself above an entirely empty driving seat. Continue reading...

Electronics giant makes $10bn profit in just three months on the back of strong sales and relaunch of Galaxy smartphonesSouth Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics logged a record profit of 11.2trn won – $10bn (£7.6bn) – in the July to September period, it said on Tuesday, its best for any quarter.The world’s biggest memory chip and smartphone maker had its de facto leader jailed in August for bribery and faced a recall of its flagship Galaxy Note 7 device. Continue reading...

Facebook expected to present testimony on Russian content on Tuesday, after three Trump aides indicted as part of inquiry into interference in 2016 voteRussia-backed content reached as many as 126 million Americans on Facebook during and after the 2016 presidential election, according to the company’s prepared testimony submitted to the Senate judiciary committee before hearings this week.Facebook believes 120 fake Russian-backed pages created 80,000 posts that were received by 29 million Americans directly, but reached a much bigger audience by users sharing, liking and following the posts. Continue reading...

It’s 500 years since Martin Luther defied the authority of the Catholic church. It’s time for a similar revolt against the hypocrisy of the religion of technologyA new power is loose in the world. It is nowhere and yet it’s everywhere. It knows everything about us – our movements, our thoughts, our desires, our fears, our secrets, who our friends are, our financial status, even how well we sleep at night. We tell it things that we would not whisper to another human being. It shapes our politics, stokes our appetites, loosens our tongues, heightens our moral panics, keeps us entertained (and therefore passive). We engage with it 150 times or more every day, and with every moment of contact we add to the unfathomable wealth of its priesthood. And we worship it because we are, somehow, mesmerised by it.In other words, we are all members of the Church of Technopoly, and what we worship is digital technology. Most of us are so happy in our obeisance to this new power that we spend an average of 50 minutes on our daily devotion to Facebook alone without a flicker of concern. It makes us feel modern, connected, empowered, sophisticated and informed. Continue reading...

The ability to self-manage our health could break down barriers to efficient healthcare, but only if doctors embrace the technologyHealthcare is the fastest rising cost to taxpayers in advanced western economies. The ability to self-manage our health is one of the best ways to rein in the rising costs. And the obstacles to bringing these costs down for consumers are often the medical practitioners who insist the only way to practise is to exchange letters with each other, to write illegible prescriptions and to refer patients to specialists for information they can now gather on their smartphones.Dr Eric Topol, an American cardiologist and professor, raised the ante on this in his 2015 book The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands. His observations about digital disruption in the healthcare system offer an insight into how doctors have been slow to embrace new technologies. Topol was alerted to this when he received a text message from a patient with a screenshot of an electrocardiogram he’d run on himself from a smartphone app. “I’m in afib [atrial fibrillation]. Now what do I do?” the patient asked. Continue reading...

Driver reviews intended to provide insight into the person picking you up often say more about who they have had in the back of their carA new Uber feature allowing users to check previous reviews of their drivers has opened up a world of drunken apologies, private confessions and angry complaints.The feature, rolled out to users worldwide on Friday, is intended to provide more insight into who will be picking customers up. It helps align the app with Uber’s long-running claim to be simply a middleman, linking what the company calls “driver-partners” with “riders” in a largely hands-off manner. Continue reading...

Company says only a small handful of review devices have been affected and that tests show device behaves same as other OLED-based devicesFollowing reports of defective screens in the first batch of Pixel 2 XL smartphones, Google says that its tests show so-called burn is not a widespread issue.

Former Bank of England adviser and ex-M&S executive Laurel Powers-Freeling named as new chair of embattled taxi appUber has unveiled former Bank of England adviser Laurel Powers-Freeling as the new chair of its UK operations, as it battles to stave off a ban on operating in London.Powers-Freeling, who was born in the US but took British citizenship in 2003, will oversee operations at the ride-hailing app at a crucial juncture for the business that claims to have 5 million customers in the UK, served by 50,000 drivers. Continue reading...

White grievance is on the rise around the world – even in the non-real world, as criticism of the latest instalment of the Wolfenstein game demonstratesWolfenstein has been around longer than I’ve been alive. What began as two innovative anti-Nazi stealth video games for the Apple II and Commodore 64 became id Software’s famous first-person anti-Nazi shooter. The game popularised the first-person shooter, giving rise to household names like Doom and Call of Duty. The latest iteration is released this week and, for the first time, some people are offended by its opposition to Nazis. How on earth have we got here?Related: Is there a neo-Nazi storm brewing in Trump country? Continue reading...

Condensing everything that’s good about the bigger Google Home into a small pin-cushion-like speaker works great, but it won’t blow you away for musicGoogle Home Mini is the company’s new smart speaker that shrinks down all the intelligence into a cheaper, smaller package.

Channel 4’s Jay Hunt who poached Bake Off from BBC and commissioned hit shows like Sherlock appointed creative chief of European video operationsApple has hired the television executive who masterminded Channel 4’s £75m poaching of The Great British Bake Off from the BBC, in an ambitious move to take on traditional broadcasters and digital rivals Netflix and Amazon.The US tech firm has hired Jay Hunt, who has held top roles at Channel 4, the BBC and Channel 5, and whose credits include British hits such as Sherlock, Luther, Humans and Gogglebox. She was also behind deals to bring US series such as Homeland and The Handmaid’s Tale to the UK. Continue reading...

The tech world wants us to believe that virtual reality will unlock human understanding on a global scale. But it’s also a business strategy

Four UK-based, female influencers on Instagram discuss how they use the social media platform and the effect it has had on their lives. They tackle issues such as anxiety, addiction and the endless appetite for consumption, but point out that their real lives are distinct from what they portray on their Instagram feed Continue reading...

An old RPG favourite is thrillingly reborn on the 3DS, a Sony platform franchise takes a step up and a cyberpunk shooter proves a real blastNintendo 3DS; cert: 3

Prime minister responds to NBN Co chief’s concerns the network may never pay its way, due to competition from 4G networkMalcolm Turnbull has labelled the national broadband network a mistake and blamed Labor for leaving the Coalition a “calamitous train wreck” of a project while responding to concerns from the NBN Co chief executive that it may not pay its own way.Bill Morrow has suggested that competing technologies may hamper the commercial viability of the NBN in the lead-up to an ABC Four Corners investigation, airing Monday night, into the digital divide between premises that get faster fibre-to-the-premises rather than fibre-to-the-node connections. Continue reading...

The tech pioneer, CEO of publishing company O’Reilly Media, says his industry will fail unless the web giants start putting consumers ahead of shareholdersTim O’Reilly believes we need to have a reset. This means more coming from him than it does from most people. The 63-year-old CEO, born in Ireland and raised in San Francisco, is one of the most influential pioneers and thinkers of the internet age. His publishing company, O’Reilly Media, began producing computer manuals in the late 1970s and he has been early to spot many influential tech trends ever since: open-source software, web 2.0, wifi, the maker movement and big data among them.His new book, WTF: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us, looks at work and how jobs will change in a world shaped by technology. It is sometimes hard not to be pessimistic about what’s coming over the hill, but he is convinced that our destiny remains in human hands. Continue reading...

Consumer group finds that 53% of households are left unhappy by slow speeds, rising prices or router failuresHalf of all broadband users in the UK are getting a raw deal from their supplier, with slow speeds, rising prices and router failures exasperating customers, according to a damning assessment of Britain’s internet services.Consumer group Which? found that 53% of households have had difficulties with their broadband, with customers of Virgin Media, TalkTalk, Sky and BT the most likely to experience an issue. Continue reading...

Arianna Huffington’s upcoming app stops you receiving notifications, so you can concentrate on other things. But is it the best way to break free of technology?

A huge weakness in wifi security erodes online privacy. But the real challenge is designing with human shortcomings in mindThis week’s security scandal is the discovery that every household with wifi in this country has a network that isn’t really private. For 13 years a weakness has lurked in the supposedly secure way in which wireless networks carry our information. Although the WPA2 security scheme was supposed to be mathematically proven to be uncrackable, it turns out that the mechanism by which it can compensate for weak signals can be compromised, and when that happens it might as well be unencrypted. Practically every router, every laptop and every mobile phone in the world is now potentially exposed. As the Belgian researcher who discovered the vulnerability points out, this could be abused to steal information such as credit card numbers, emails and photos.It is not a catastrophic flaw: the attacker has to be within range of the wifi they are attacking. Most email and chat guarded by end-to-end encryption is still protected from eavesdroppers. But the flaw affects a huge number of devices, many of which will never be updated to address it. Since both ends of a wifi connection need to be brought up to date to be fixed, it is no longer safe to assume that any wifi connection is entirely private. Continue reading...

Antonella wants a reasonably priced compact camera with an image stabiliser that’s good for night shots. Something like the Sony RX100, but cheaper …I’m struggling to find the perfect camera for my needs. I watched a YouTube video by one of my favourite photographers, and she suggested the Sony DSC-RX100 M5, but it costs way too much. It got my attention because it was small, it had the SteadyShot stabiliser, and was good for night shoots.I’m now using a Canon PowerShot SX110IS, but it’s pretty terrible, unless the weather conditions are perfect. If I try photographing landscapes at night, I get wobbly pictures, and I don’t usually have wobbly hands. Continue reading...

Company updates rules on hate speech, revenge porn and violent groups to counter perceptions social network is not doing enough to protect usersTwitter is introducing new rules around hate symbols, sexual advances and violent groups, in an effort to counter perceptions that the social network is not doing enough to protect those who feel silenced on the site.The company was planning to announce the new rules later on this week, but they leaked in an email to Wired magazine, which published the changes on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Google’s parent company drops takeaway food and also medication into back gardens in rural Australia as project enters new phaseGoogle parent Alphabet has begun a new phase of testing its hybrid drones, dubbed Project Wing, by delivering burritos and medication to customers in rural Australia in a partnership with taqueria Guzman y Gomez and pharmacist Chemist Warehouse.In a blogpost, Project Wing’s co-lead James Ryan Burgess wrote: “This fall we’ve been testing in a rural community on the border of the [Australian Capital Territory] and [New South Wales] and tackling an entirely different level of operational complexity: making deliveries directly to people’s yards.” Continue reading...

Top-end phone with premium design and big battery looks to lead new trend of baking AI in locally to make smartphones smarter and with greater privacyHuawei’s new Mate 10 Pro takes aim squarely at Samsung, Google and Apple with a large screen, competition-beating big battery and AI baked in.

Clinton, promoting memoir addressing her 2016 US election defeat, tells UK audiences that the Kremlin is ‘hacking our unity’ by waging information warHillary Clinton embarked on a speaking tour of Britain with a message that the Brexit referendum was won on the basis of a big lie and warning that Vladimir Putin has been conducting a “cyber cold war” against the west.She urged more women to enter politics and praised those who spoke up about the Hollywood movie mogul and Democratic donor Harvey Weinstein, saying his reported behaviour was disgusting. Continue reading...

Warehouse will be third in north-west and will be next-generation facility with staff working alongside robotsAmazon is to create a further 1,200 new jobs with a warehouse in Bolton as it continues its rapid UK expansion.The warehouse, which will be the third to open in the north-west, will be one of a new generation of Amazon facilities that will see staff work alongside robots. Stefano Perego, an Amazon director, said the warehouse would take the total number of new permanent jobs the company has created in the north-west of England to more than 3,500 since 2016. Continue reading...

WeChat is blaming machine learning for erroneously converting a neutral phrase meaning ‘black foreigner’ into something far more offensiveChinese messaging app WeChat has reportedly apologised after an AI error resulted in it translating a neutral Chinese phrase into the n-word.The WeChat error was reported by Shanghai-based theatre producer and actor Ann James, a black American. In a post on the service’s Twitter-like Moments feature, she wrote that it had translated hei laowai – a neutral phrase which literally means “black foreigner” – as the n-word. Continue reading...

Roy Price is accused of sexually harassing producer and ignoring actor’s allegation that Harvey Weinstein raped herAmazon has put the head of its video content service on leave after he became embroiled in the widening scandal surrounding the disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein.Roy Price, who is in charge of Amazon Studios, is accused of sexually harassing Isa Hackett, the producer of one its best known shows, The Man in the High Castle. The actor Rose McGowan also claimed Price ignored her claim that Weinstein had raped her. Continue reading...

Ex-football boss is ‘proper excited’ about something dismissed by IMF, bankers and economistsThe trouble with these cryptocurrencies is that expert opinion is so divided. In the sceptical camp, you have the likes of Kenneth Rogoff, the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund; Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of one of the world’s largest banks, JP Morgan; and our own Financial Conduct Authority. In the other camp, there’s Harry Redknapp.Yes, the football manager who recently departed Birmingham City is the latest celebrity to join the craze. “Proper excited about Mobile Cryptocurrency! I’m in, get involved!” tweeted Redknapp in support of Electroneum, which bills itself as “the first British cryptocurrency.” Continue reading...

Tote bag created by artist Frances Cannon features two nude women dancing but was ‘in no way meant to be controversial’The Victorian Women’s Trust, a not-for-profit organisation that supports women and girls through research and advocacy, has been banned by Facebook from advertising a tote bag for sale as part of a fundraising drive.The bag features a picture of two nude women dancing and was created by the Melbourne artist Frances Cannon, who uses her work to promote self-esteem, positive body image and self-love. Continue reading...

Former Tottenham Hotspur manager urges people to get involved with Electroneum in rare tweet firm says he was not paid forWarnings about bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are coming from all directions. The City watchdog has said the bitcoin industry is unregulated and investors could be wiped out. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan, has called them a fraud and said the entire bitcoin system will blow up. Even Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has said cryptocurrencies are risky and used by criminals.Related: Cryptocurrency craze wins over ex-football boss – but few others | Nils Pratley Continue reading...

Rising price of the cryptocurrency, now worth four times as much as an ounce of gold, has led to warnings of a bubbleThe price of bitcoin has smashed through $5,000 to an all-time high.

Pennine and Focus Group blame each other after hundreds of premium rate overseas calls were billed to my companyI run a small company and incur monthly phone bills of about £140. Recently, however, I was charged £3,075 for more than 200 calls to overseas premium rate numbers over a four-day period. My provider, Focus Group, was unaware of the charges until I contacted it. It placed a bar on all international calls and premium rate numbers, but advised me that a further £8,282 had been racked up in the previous 11 days.Pennine supplies my actual telephone systems, and it and Focus are blaming each other. Pennine says Focus should have noticed the large call rates, which were occurring at night and were out of character, while Focus says Pennine should have offered a more secure system. Continue reading...

Security firm uncovers hacking group KovCoreG’s attempts to trick browsers of world’s largest adult site into installing fake updatesMillions of Pornhub users were targeted with a malvertising attack that sought to trick them into installing malware on their PCs, according to infosec firm Proofpoint.By the time the attack was uncovered, it had been active “for more than a year”, Proofpoint said, having already “exposed millions of potential victims in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia” to malware by pretending to be software updates to popular browsers. Continue reading...

Forget sudoku – Japan has produced hundreds of other fiendish logic problems that are unknown in the UK. Alex Bellos explains how to tackle Shakashaka, Marupeke and SkyscrapersThe pencil-and-paper logic puzzle is arguably Japan’s most successful cultural export of recent years. Look inside almost any daily newspaper and you will find at least one number puzzle with a Japanese name; sudoku most commonly, but there are many others, such as kakuro and futoshiki, to mention only the ones that appear regularly in the Guardian. Shelves stuffed full of these exotic-sounding, square-gridded, numerical brain-teasers fill every newsagent and bookstore.I visited Tokyo to try to understand why Japan dominates the puzzle world. I discovered a country with a unique puzzle culture. Japanese inventors have created hundreds of other brilliant types of logic puzzle, most unknown in the west, and the country sustains a cottage industry of several hundred puzzle “artisans” who design these puzzles by hand rather than by computer, as is usually done elsewhere. Continue reading...