Technology | The Guardian

A theory denying the existence of the country is gaining ground. But the suggestion that countries and cities are mere figments of our imagination is a meme that dates back to the birth of the webAustralia doesn’t exist. The signs were there the whole time: in what country is the only thing more poisonous than the snakes the spiders? How did we ever believe that kangaroos were a thing?This discovery, believed by some to be a joke or a conspiracy theory, has been circulating on social media in recent weeks after being formulated on Reddit in early 2017. Except it turns out not to be the only theory of its kind: through the years, online sleuths have found that all sorts of places don’t exist. Continue reading...

What do we really know about the influence of the ‘voter button’?On the morning of 28 October last year, the day of Iceland’s parliamentary elections, Heiðdís Lilja Magnúsdóttir, a lawyer living in a small town in the north of the country, opened Facebook on her laptop. At the top of her newsfeed, where friends’ recent posts would usually appear, was a box highlighted in light blue. On the left of the box was a button, similar in style to the familiar thumb of the “like” button, but here it was a hand putting a ballot in a slot. “Today is Election Day!” was the accompanying exclamation, in English. And underneath: “Find out where to vote, and share that you voted.” Under that was smaller print saying that 61 people had already voted. Heiðdís took a screenshot and posted it on her own Facebook profile feed, asking: “I’m a little curious! Did everyone get this message in their newsfeed this morning?”In Reykjavik, 120 miles south, Elfa Ýr Gylfadóttir glanced at her phone and saw Heiðdís’s post. Elfa is director of the Icelandic Media Commission, and Heiðdís’s boss. The Media Commission regulates, for example, age ratings for movies and video games, and is a part of Iceland’s Ministry of Education. Elfa wondered why she hadn’t received the same voting message. She asked her husband to check his feed, and there was the button. Elfa was alarmed. Why wasn’t it being shown to everyone? Might it have something to do with different users’ political attitudes? Was everything right and proper with this election? Continue reading...

The creator of Bafta award winner Edith Finch is pushing the boundaries of storytellingWhat Remains of Edith Finch was a surprise best game winner at the Bafta Games awards on Thursday night. The indie release had been nominated in several other categories, but its top prize victory was such a shock that its creative director, Ian Dallas of Giant Sparrow, claimed not to have prepared a speech. “I wrote a speech for all the other awards, but this one I figured there would be something in Japanese,” Dallas told the BBC, a joke referring to Nintendo, which dominated elsewhere with Super Mario Odyssey and the stunning The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a game so all-encompassing it seems to have the special ability of making time disappear.Edith Finch is a remarkable little game, though to call it little is, perhaps, to do it a disservice. It is short, at two to three hours (and as a result, relatively cheap), but it is vast in its imagination, scope and literary ambition. Dallas has spoken before of the influences behind this eerie and beautiful story of a girl returning home to explore the history of her cursed family, citing HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe and particularly Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude as reference points. Continue reading...

Businessman wins legal action to force removal of search results about past convictionA businessman has won his legal action to remove search results about a criminal conviction in a landmark “right to be forgotten” case that could have wide-ranging repercussions.Related: Google cases are a battle between right to privacy and right to know Continue reading...

Arunima wonders if one external hard drive will keep cherished pictures safely available for decades, but it’s not that simpleI read your article from June 2016 on What’s the best way to organise and store my digital photos? Is it not sufficient to save my pictures on one external hard drive? Must I save them on two? Also, for how many years will an external hard drive keep the pictures safe?

Steve Huffman says communities can set own guidelines, but racism is permitted on wider site as people have ‘different beliefs’Racist slurs are permitted on Reddit, says the popular social news and discussion site’s chief executive, Steve Huffman.Within a discussion thread that followed the publishing of the site’s transparency report on Russian propaganda, Huffman, in reply to a question from a Reddit user about whether “open racism, including slurs” are allowed on the platform, said their use was not against Reddit’s rules. Continue reading...

Like you, I have no idea how to wean myself off the platform, but acknowledgement is the first step to recovery

The CEO’s privacy is as vulnerable as ours, and the social network faces a regulation battle

Facebook’s chief executive on the right to privacy, banning Cambridge Analytica and the things he is taking responsibility for

Case of New York company’s alleged information collection under guise of academic research echoes Cambridge Analytica scandalFacebook has suspended a company from its site while it investigates claims it harvested user information under the guise of academic research, in a case with echoes of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.Related: Facebook employs psychologist whose firm sold data to Cambridge Analytica Continue reading...

Kemi Badenoch, now an MP, admits altering site a decade ago to ‘say nice things about Tories’Harriet Harman has said she has accepted an apology from a Tory MP for hacking into her website and altering its contents.Kemi Badenoch, the MP for Saffron Walden and a rising star in the Conservative party, made the confession in a video interview unearthed this week. Continue reading...

New headset can listen to internal vocalisation and speak to the wearer while appearing silent to the outside worldResearchers have created a wearable device that can read people’s minds when they use an internal voice, allowing them to control devices and ask queries without speaking.The device, called AlterEgo, can transcribe words that wearers verbalise internally but do not say out loud, using electrodes attached to the skin. Continue reading...

Rejecting official information channels, Rio’s citizens are navigating their city using crowdsourced data on shootings and robberies as they happen“A red spot on the map means gunfire, so I avoid going there,” says Leonardo Duarte, who works on the streets for a rehabilitation clinic in Rio de Janeiro. Shootings and violence are routine in his neighbourhood of Vigário Geral, a slum in the grip of conflict between rival drug-trafficking gangs. To stay out of danger when navigating the city he has a strategy: never go anywhere without checking his phone for live crime data.An increasing number of Rio residents are subscribing to crowdsourcing apps and following the social network pages of crime-watch groups such as Basta de Violência (No More Violence) and Realidade do Rio de Janeiro (Reality of Rio de Janeiro). Continue reading...

Father of Nasim Najafi Aghdam says he reported his daughter missing before the attack, and warned police she may be heading to YouTubeThe woman who allegedly opened fire at YouTube’s headquarters in a suburb of San Francisco, injuring three before killing herself, was apparently furious with the video website because it had stopped paying her for her clips.Police in California named the shooter as Nasim Najafi Aghdam. Continue reading...

From Twitter to Tumblr, swiping through your mobile’s apps is the new doing something while doing nothing at all. Is it simply a case of new technology, same old humans?Horizontal. Phone propped less than 10cm away from your face: minimum hand muscles engaged. Twitter: meme (it’s funny, but you don’t laugh). Instagram: cat picture (it’s cute, but you don’t smile). Facebook: acquaintance complaining (it’s sad, but you don’t frown). Tumblr. Snapchat. Back to Twitter. Repeat for an hour or two, until bodily functions force you to get up – and even then, wait until you are in actual physical pain before going to the loo, so deep are you in your trance-like state.No, this isn’t an extract from the diary of a depressive. This is how we members of Generation Z, the name given to those dull young things born between (roughly) 1998 and 2010, spend much of our free time, locked in “phone boredom”. The Daily Beast reports that this involves being on your phone, but largely just opening and closing up to 20-30 apps and finding nothing that interests you. Doing something, while doing nothing at all: technology has created a new way for Generation Z, to go out of their minds with boredom. Continue reading...

Overall, men are much more likely to commit murders than women are, according to FBI dataOne of the reasons that the shooting at YouTube’s California headquarters on Wednesday stood out was that the suspect, police said, was a woman. America’s high-profile gun attacks are rarely carried out by female shooters.An FBI study of 160 “active shooter” incidents between 2000 and 2013 found that only 6 incidents, or 3.8%, were perpetrated by a female shooter. All six of these female shooters used handguns, according to the FBI study. The deadliest of these shootings, at a post office in Santa Barbara, California, in 2006, left six victims dead. Five of the six incidents involved women opening fire on current or former coworkers at their workplaces, including at the University of Alabama, a supermarket in Florida, and a factory in Philadelphia, all in 2010. Continue reading...

The idea that people’s HIV status and physical location should be used by advertisers is unsurprising in the tech world and horrifying outside it. Outrage at this is justifiedThe gay hookup app Grindr, used by millions of people every day to find sexual partners, has been sharing its users’ HIV status with third parties. There could not be a more dramatic illustration of the pervasive nature of the data economy. The first thing to note is that no one was compelled to hand this information over to the people they hoped to meet through the app or the company that runs it, all of them complete strangers. It is most unlikely that users imagined that such potentially damaging and certainly deeply private information would be shared with further companies they had never heard of, and whose business is hard for any outsiders to understand.Whether the users were at fault for excessive trust, or lack of imagination, or even whether they were at fault at all for submitting information that would let their potential partners make a better informed choice, as liberal ethics would demand, the next thing to scrutinise is the role of the company itself. Grindr has now said that it will no longer hand over the information, which is an admission that it was wrong to do so in the first place. It also says that the information was always anonymised, and that its policy was perfectly standard practice among digital businesses. This last is perfectly true, and perhaps the most worrying part of the whole story. Continue reading...

Facebook says ‘bug’ resulted in videos being kept, while CEO Mark Zuckerberg hits back at Apple chief Tim Cook’s ‘extremely glib’ attackFacebook continues to deal with the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica files, announcing policy changes and bug fixes aimed at undoing some of the company’s more controversial data collection features.On Monday, Facebook apologised for storing draft videos which users had filmed and then deleted, saying a “bug” resulted in them being indefinitely stored instead. Continue reading...

A king recruits his subjects, and neighbouring rulers, to share in his quest for a fairer new worldOnce the obvious decrees have been made – free sweets, everlasting school holidays! – most children, if asked to reign for a day, would surely wish for peace and plenty for their kingdom. So it is with Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum, a prince made, in sudden and bloody circumstances, an exiled king who, together with a growing band of friends, supporters and assorted strays, must build an empire and an alluring constitution to draw subjects to his freshly birthed nation.Rendered in the Studio Ghibli aesthetic – defined here by artist Yoshiyuki Momose and composer Joe Hisaishi, who both worked on the Japanese studio’s Oscar-winning Spirited Away – the newly released Ni no Kuni II’s non-threatening whimsy is stylish but childlike. And for the first few hours, while searching for a patch of unclaimed land on which to settle a capital, it’s a likable adventure. You bumble over hill and dale, slaying monsters, incrementally upgrading your swords and sandals, and sleeping off the effort at local inns. Continue reading...

Everything you need to know about the videos your children are watchingYou don’t need to attend a VidCon meet-and-greet to be across the fact that young people are watching a lot of online video content; a casual glance around any bus, tram, cafe or quadrangle will reveal smartphones, tablets and laptops glued to favourite channels. The international phenomenon of teen YouTube stars is, by now, well-trodden ground – but who are the young YouTube superstars in Australia, and what are they peddling?It happens to us all: one day, we wake up and realise that we’re no longer at the crest of the internet wave. For some of us, this can be shattering. Continue reading...

Trump is after Amazon, Congress is after Facebook, and Apple and Google have their problems too. Should the world’s top tech firms be worried?Trump is going after Amazon; Congress is after Facebook; Google is too big, and Apple is short of new products. Is it any surprise that sentiment toward the tech industry giants is turning sour? The consequences of such a readjustment, however, may be dire.Related: Trump lashes out at Amazon and sends stocks tumbling Continue reading...

Ready Player One takes gaming culture and represents it as male-dominated, elitist and not dissimilar to the ‘alt-right’Steven Spielberg’s new blockbuster, Ready Player One, is the most significant Hollywood depiction of gamer culture to date. For the first time in mainstream cinema, it presents video games not merely as the cliched subcultural world of geeks and nerds, but as a significant force shaping the future of entertainment, communication, love, and politics.In this way, it does justice to the importance of video games, which have an increasing role in social and cultural life. On the other hand, it’s fraught with gender problems, reverence for elitism, and a rightwing endorsement of the importance of culture over political and economic conditions. As such, the celebrated director is showing the worst side of gamer culture. Continue reading...

Steven Spielberg’s film mashes together Jessica Rabbit, Sonic the Hedgehog and the Iron Giant, without much thought to how they would all get alongOn paper, it sounds like a utopia. Steven Spielberg’s new film Ready Player One presents itself as a party to which everyone is invited, its fictional VR dimension playing host to familiar faces from every blessed corner of the pop-culture universe. In the virtual plane known as the Oasis, players can captain the Millennium Falcon or the fluffy beast Falcor. They can try to sweet-talk Jessica Rabbit or befriend Sonic the Hedgehog. Brave warriors may fight alongside Freddy Krueger or Solid Snake, Mecha-Godzilla or the Iron Giant.Except that the Iron Giant is a lover, not a fighter. Tricking out the character with death-lasers goes against everything that he’s about, directly contradicting his native film’s guiding theme of pacifism in the face of violence. The way Ready Player One deploys the character undermines everything we understand about him. But the film doesn’t get hung up on this, quickly cutting to the next big-ticket cameo. Was that Samus Aran from Metroid just now? Continue reading...

Scandals are rife in Silicon Valley and its greatest minds not as popular as when they first created some of the world’s most impressive technology. Jordan Erica Webber asks whySubscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook, Twitter or email us at podcasts@theguardian.comIn March 2018, a whistleblower called Christopher Wylie revealed to the Observer that a company called Cambridge Analytica had used personal information harvested from Facebook to target voters with personalised political advertisements. The story was so huge that it triggered a movement represented by the hashtag #DeleteFacebook, which garnered support from big names like WhatsApp’s co-founder Brian Acton, SpaceX and Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, and even Playboy.

Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal to testify in the UK shows us what we can expect as a small nation adrift on its own, says HD LewisWhy should MPs be surprised that the head of one of the world’s most powerful companies should ignore British appeals but agree to go before the US Congress (MPs ‘astonished’ by Facebook chief’s refusal of third call to testify, 28 March)?Britain is one small nation that will soon be on its own among other small nations, having chosen – well, at least a minority of its voting-age citizens chose – to leave one of the strongest political and economic units in the world. Continue reading...

The president escalated his attack on Amazon, alleging the company shortchanges taxpayers and puts traditional retailers out of businessPresident Trump escalated his attack on Amazon on Thursday, alleging the retail and cloud-hosting behemoth shortchanges taxpayers and attacking its use of the US Postal Service and its impact on traditional retailers.“I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the election,” he wrote on Twitter. “Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our postal system as their delivery boy (causing tremendous loss to the US), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!” Continue reading...

Users complain of phone and text data collected by the company despite never having agreed to practiceFacebook began logging the text messages and phone calls of its users before it explicitly notified them of its practice, contradicting the company’s earlier claims that “uploading this information has always been opt-in only”.In at least one previous version of the Messenger app, Facebook only told users that the setting would enable them to “send and receive SMS in Messenger”, and presented the option to users without an obvious way to opt out: the prompt offered a big blue button reading “OK”, and a much smaller grey link to “settings”. Continue reading...

Company to shut down Partner Categories feature to ‘improve people’s privacy’ but analysts question potential impact of changeFacebook is shutting down a feature that allowed “data brokers” such as Experian and Oracle to use their own reams of consumer information to target social network users, the company has announced.The feature, known as “Partner Categories”, will be “winding down over the next six months”, Facebook announced in a terse blogpost. The company says the move “will help improve people’s privacy on Facebook.” Continue reading...

Companies like Uber and Citymapper are scrapping for a piece of the mass transit market – with or without the support of public bodiesThe sleek black van seemed a lot like a taxi. After summoning it to my location in central London using my smartphone, I walked a short distance to the pick-up point and clambered in. But then, just as I moved to close the door, a stranger climbed in after me.She introduced herself as Anna. It was Anna’s third time using Smart Ride, the new service from Citymapper, the route planning app that has branched out to offer its own transport services. Smart Ride uses a fleet of minivans that move around the city on a fixed network, matching up passengers based on pick-up points and destinations. Citymapper calls it “a solution for dynamic shared transportation in cities”. Essentially, it’s a cross between a taxi and a bus. Continue reading...

Suit alleges ‘egregious, shocking’ discrimination and says Facebook still allows housing advertisers to exclude certain kinds of people

John Rothenstein | Green getaway | Jennie Lee and Aneurin Bevan | Facebook | Memorable sick noteIt is to be hoped that John Rothenstein’s diary (Report, 26 March) will also tell how he persistently refused the gift to the Tate, from the German-Jewish art historian Rose Schapire in gratitude for her safety in Britain, of a collection of German Expressionist paintings, pre-eminently by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. He was said to have described her as “a conceited fool who no more understands art than a cow understands dancing”. This is why the Leicester City Art Gallery has such a fine German Expressionist collection.

Facebook could face huge fines as Federal Trade Commission confirms inquiry into whether the company engaged in ‘unfair acts’Facebook’s privacy practices are under investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission following a week of scandals and public outrage over the company’s failure to protect the personal information of tens of millions of users.“The FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook,” said Tom Pahl, acting director of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection in a statement on Monday noting that the investigation would include whether the company engaged in “unfair acts that cause substantial injury to consumers”. Continue reading...

Rev Glayne Worgan wonders if different rules apply to the social media giantAs a church minister I am reading up on data protection as new laws come in May (The web was stolen from us. This is how we can take it back, 24 March). My understanding is that churches, along with all other organisations, businesses and charities, will have to look at any data we hold (for churches that is membership lists and luncheon club registers) and make sure that we have good reason to be holding that data. We can only hold it if we have either contractural obligation, legal obligation, legitimate purposes or consent. We will then need to send a privacy notice to each person whose data we hold, with a list of that data, so the person can ask for it to be corrected or deleted. If Facebook holds any data on me (my likes, dislikes and political views) am I to assume that it will check with me that it’s correct? Or do different rules apply here?

Leaving the social network after Cambridge Analytica scandal, users discover extent of data heldAs users continue to delete their Facebook accounts in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, a number are discovering that the social network holds far more data about them than they expected, including complete logs of incoming and outgoing calls and SMS messages.The #deletefacebook movement took off after the revelations that Facebook had shared with a Cambridge psychologist the personal information of 50 million users, without their explicit consent, which later ended up in the hands of the election consultancy Cambridge Analytica. Continue reading...

In a jab against the embattled social network, Musk joked ‘What’s Facebook?’ before deactivating his companies’ official pages

Non-profit organisation behind Firefox browser announces move after Cambridge Analytica revelationsMozilla, which makes the popular Firefox web browser, has become the first major organisation to stop advertising on Facebook amid the controversy over the Cambridge Analytica files.Related: Mark Zuckerberg apologises for Facebook's 'mistakes' over Cambridge Analytica Continue reading...

Secunia’s recommended Personal Software Inspector is being discontinued and Laurence is looking for a replacementNow that Flexera has announced end-of-life on Secunia Personal Software Inspector, do you have any recommendations for a replacement? LaurenceIn 1999, David Lee Smith – who was later jailed – named his PC virus after a stripper called Melissa, and it swept the world, forcing some large companies to shut down their email gateways. That and some later malware successes forced Microsoft to spend two years rewriting Windows XP, and Windows XP Service Pack 2 was finally completed in 2004.

In 1993, the makers of The Killing Fields and Chariots of Fire bought the film rights to the world’s biggest video game. The result was a commercial disaster. But that’s only part of the storyDennis Hopper was not happy.It was the summer of 1992, a few weeks into shooting Super Mario Bros: The Motion Picture and the atmosphere on set was febrile. Endless rewrites and script splices had scrambled the story and dialogue. Producers, writers and investors were all working at cross purposes with the directors, the British couple Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton. On set, there were 300 extras waiting to film the next scene. The lines Hopper was about to deliver had been changed at the last moment, and not for the first time. He was dressed as a humanoid dinosaur, heavily made up in the sweltering North Carolina heat, his hair gelled into a weird row of reptilian spikes. Continue reading...

We’d like to hear your thoughts on Facebook, privacy and the Cambridge Analytica files

Human rights group says trolls are winning as site has become toxic place for womenTwitter is failing to prevent online violence and abuse against women, creating a toxic environment for them, Amnesty International has claimed.In a report published on Wednesday, the day that Twitter celebrates 12 years since the first tweet, Amnesty said the social network responded inconsistently when abuse was highlighted, even when it violated its own rules. Continue reading...

Google’s vice-president for news defends company against claims it is harming journalismGoogle has welcomed the competition regulator’s inquiry into the impact of digital platforms on Australian publishers.The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is investigating the impact of Google, content aggregators such as Apple News and social media platforms such as Facebook on the state of competition in media and advertising. The inquiry has taken on a new urgency in the wake of revelations about Cambridge Analytica’s mining of Facebook data. Continue reading...

Researchers discover illegal content within the distributed ledger, making possession of it potentially unlawful in many countriesGerman researchers have discovered unknown persons are using bitcoin’s blockchain to store and link to child abuse imagery, potentially putting the cryptocurrency in jeopardy.The blockchain is the open-source, distributed ledger that records every bitcoin transaction, but can also store small bits of non-financial data. This data is typically notes about the trade of bitcoin, recording what it was for or other metadata. But it can also be used to store links and files. Continue reading...

Downing Street backs information commissioner inquiry into data-mining affecting millions of peopleDowning Street has expressed its concern about the Facebook data breach involving the analytics company that worked with Donald Trump’s campaign team and that affected tens of millions of people.No 10 weighed in on the row as almost $20bn (£14bn) was wiped off the social network company’s market cap in the first few minutes of trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange, where Facebook opened down more than 3%. By midday, the company’s share price losses had multiplied to more than $40bn, making the day its worst in more than five years. Continue reading...

Beautiful, fantastical and feelgood, this Studio Ghibli collaboration is a timely counterpoint to the idea that games are gun-centric, violent and nihilisticJapanese role-playing games tend to be pretty specialist, with anime-style graphics and rather old-fashioned, often turn-based gameplay. But Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, whose gorgeous visual style was created in collaboration with feted animation pioneers Studio Ghibli, is more inviting than most. It possesses the irresistibly charming vibe of Nintendo’s Zelda games, combined with modern, open-world gameplay that’s reminiscent of Witcher 3.Ni no Kuni II begins in Ding Dong Dell, a cute fantasy kingdom occupied by cat-human Grymalkins, though before long the action takes us elsewhere. You play Evan, a cat-boy-king whose ascension to the throne is imminent following the death of his father. But dastardly mice execute a coup. Evan manages to escape. Continue reading...

The tech industry doesn’t simply tolerate gender discrimination, it’s hardwired to marginalise women, says author Emily ChangEmily Chang is an American journalist and host of the US TV show Bloomberg Technology. Her new book, Brotopia, is an exposé of Silicon Valley’s macho culture.What is Brotopia?

JFTC investigating firm over antitrust allegations that it demanded fees from suppliers for discounting productsAmazon’s Japanese headquarters in Tokyo have been raided by the country’s fair trade watchdog on suspicion of violation of antitrust regulations.The Japanese Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) said on Thursday that Amazon Japan was being investigated after allegations that the company improperly asked suppliers to shoulder part of the costs of discounting their products on the retail site. Amazon Japan said Thursday that it was “fully cooperating” with JFTC, but declined to comment on the details of the allegations. Continue reading...

Streaming service’s voice recognition system seeks to free it from reliance on Siri and Alexa, paving way to launch its own smart speakerSpotify is experimenting with a voice-control interface, looking to free itself from reliance on Siri and Alexa and pave the way for the company’s forthcoming smart speaker.Users of the service have spotted the new feature hiding in the search bar of Spotify’s iOS app. After tapping the magnifying glass to search for a track or playlist , testers see a microphone icon inside a white bubble, according to the Verge. Continue reading...

As cities vie to host second campus, local activists say the ‘Hunger Games’-style competition is a bad deal for everyone – except Amazon