Technology | The Guardian

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...

Users from the US, Canada, Australia and Europe complain their Samsung smartphones do not receive all text messages sent to themUsers of Samsung’s Galaxy S8 smartphones across the US, Australasia and Europe are complaining about SMS messages that seemingly fail to arrive.The issue, which appears to affect users on all four US major mobile phone networks as well as in Canada, Australia, France and the UK, causes intermittent problems with basic text messages. A certain proportion of SMS messages appear not to be received by the Galaxy S8. No warning is sent, leaving users oblivious. Continue reading...

With bitcoin and Ethereum gathering momentum among investors, some experts fear a bubble could soon burstJoe Kennedy, patriarch of the Kennedy clan, said he knew it was time to exit the stock market after a shoeshine boy gave him stock tips. If everyone thinks it’s time to buy, it’s time to sell, reasoned Kennedy. Then came the great crash of 1929 to prove him right. Perhaps some of that thinking could be applied today to the digital currency bonanza.In recent months, warning voices have grown louder as the digital assets known as cryptocurrencies have attained record valuations. The price of bitcoin, the most famous cryptocurrency, has soared this year, from $969 to more than $5,000 in September; rival Ethereum began the year at $8 and has traded as high as $400 – while new coins or tokens are issued weekly, often attached to tech startups as a way to raise venture capital. Continue reading...

While the Blue Mountains error in New South Wales has been fixed, those looking for Aireys Inlet in Victoria head down a residential drivewayThere is nothing particularly special about Adam Gilliver’s house on the Victorian coast, except that it sits a bit further back from the road compared with the homes of his neighbours.And that Google Maps thinks it’s a lighthouse. Continue reading...

If you’ve got acrophobia, paranoia, fear of flying, PTSD, even depression, software could soon be the solutionLeslie Channell admits he’s not a typical case for treatment. Channell, known to everybody as Chann, is a registered pilot who served 24 years in the army working on Apache helicopters. Chann also happens to be scared of heights. He doesn’t mind flying planes or sitting on the side of the Apache with the door open; he’s just terrified of going up two or three floors of a building or driving over a bridge.Chann is nervous; his speech is fast. He says he’s sweating. We meet at a trendy startup in Oxford, where he is about to undergo virtual-reality therapy for his phobia (although the term “virtual-reality” therapy is controversial: some say the VR is just a tool for the therapy; others argue that the virtual reality is the therapy itself). Psychologists are now trialling VR for all kinds of conditions, from phobias to pain management to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Continue reading...

The Connecticut-born marketing executive on her fearless daughter and the app she couldn’t live withoutBorn in Connecticut, US, Saint JohnBozoma Saint John, 40, spent her early childhood in Kenya. After studying English and African American at Wesleyan University, she worked for Spike Lee’s advertising agency, Spike DDB, then ran PepsiCo’s music and entertainment marketing division. In 2014, she became head of global consumer marketing for Apple Music and iTunes. In June, she became chief brand officer at Uber. She is a widow, has one daughter and lives in Los Angeles.Which living person do you most admire, and why?

Continue reading...

The concept is simple: it’s a celebration of black girls and women in a world all too happy to make them smallIsn’t technology amazing? I cannot fathom a world without a search engine at my fingertips. How did we cope before them? Sometimes, I remember I completed university without the distracting diversions of YouTube, and marvel silently. When I realise neither Tumblr nor Twitter were around to derail my academic career, I thank my lucky stars. In 2017, aka the hyperbolic age, we get to receive (perceived) threats of nuclear war issued via 140 characters (or, as of last month, 280), and people with strange avatars can threaten you with bodily harm. It’s sometimes easy to forget there is joy to be wrung out of a life lived even partly online.CaShawn Thompson’s inadvertent #BlackGirlMagic movement has weathered all sorts since its inception, from applause to cries of “reverse racism” (no such thing exists, friends). The concept is simple: it’s a celebration of black girls and women in a world all too happy to make them small, and to discard their contributions. Continue reading...

John Sculley, 78, remembers the early days of Apple, 24 April 1984The first time I drove out to Silicon Valley, it was 1982 and I had no idea where I was going. The place was mainly still homes. Apple was based in a handful of converted houses and tilt-ups. There was a one-storey building where they’d started designing the Macintosh. It had a Bösendorfer piano inside and a pirate flag on the roof.Steve Jobs was in jeans when I arrived. He’d co-founded the company in 1976 and wanted to be the CEO but the board had refused. He was 26, and Apple had $550m in revenue. The board said there needed to be someone more experienced in charge. That’s why I was invited; they wanted me to be the adult supervision. Continue reading...

Our post had a picture of my husband and me, and a toll-free number so prospective mothers could call us free of chargeWhen I told my husband we were going to adopt, he looked at me as if I were crazy. We had always wanted to do it, but somehow the years had slipped away while we were busy with work and family.We are blessed with two biological sons, but through adoption we wanted to offer a child born into difficult circumstances a better home. My husband is a New York City firefighter and I am a paediatric physical therapist. Helping others is central to who we are. Continue reading...

Eugene Kaspersky, the founder of the Moscow-based cybersecurity firm, called allegations of role in government hack ‘like the script of a C movie’Moscow-based cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab has hit back at a report in the Wall Street Journal which accused it of being involved in a Russian government hack of an NSA contractor in 2015.The paper reported on Thursday that the NSA contractor, a Vietnamese national who was working to create replacements for the hacking tools leaked by Edward Snowden, was hacked on his personal computer after he took his work home. Continue reading...

The Silicon Valley company launched hardware at the San Francisco Jazz Center, including their latest smartphones, new voice assistants and more

Social network’s British revenues nearly quadruple on the back of climbing advertising salesFacebook’s UK operations paid just £5.1m in corporation tax last year, despite a jump in profit and revenues nearly quadrupling on the back of increasing advertising sales.

Tesla’s new take on the electric SUV is powerfully impressive. But is the Model X a real world contender or just an expensive gimmickfest?Price: from £70,500 for the 75D

The gamers’ charity SpecialEffect is holding One Special Day, a day-long fundraising drive to help people with disabilities get back into the video games they loveVideo games can get a pretty raw deal in the news. At worst, we see stories claiming links between playing violent games and some of the worst aspects of humanity, or that games are robbing children of time spent in nature. At best, we hear news stories where games are regarded with a certain distain; something to be smirked at, and not taken seriously. But these sorts of stories completely miss the varied, rich and nuanced experiences that playing games can afford.But playing video games isn’t always a trivial endeavour. For many children and adults with disabilities, simply being able to pick up a controller and coordinate fine motor movements can be a difficult, even impossible task. SpecialEffect is a charity based in Oxfordshire that tries to help people get back into the game. Continue reading...

Apple might have phoned in the design again, but an improved power supply, wireless charging and a cracking camera save it. But is it worth £700?Another year, another iPhone, except this time there are three of them. The iPhone 8 is the first out of the gate, but it’s overshadowed by the iPhone X looming in the wings, and while there are some new elements – a glass back – you could be forgiven for feeling a bit of deja vu.

Jenny opened a Facebook account and has progressed from a personal profile to a business page. Now she’d like to delete her personal profile …I set up a Facebook account for my business but I did it as a personal page. I then realised my mistake, so I now have a shortcut link to a business page. How can I delete the personal page, because I only want to have one business page? Jenny Continue reading...

Jane Austen’s works have been given the World of Warcraft treatment, but with dinner parties instead of dungeons – and gossip instead of guns. Our writer ties on her virtual bonnet and goes hunting for a suitorI had been travelling for two days with my aunt Amelia in her private carriage when upon arrival at the Fleckcot Glebe Inn, an establishment of some ill repute, Aunt Amelia received a letter that so altered our plans it leaves me in a whirlwind of mortification. My name is Flopsy McCanada, a Regency era girl of large oval face and low social standing. My aim? To find my way through the confusing customs and daily rituals of Jane Austen’s age without committing a major social transgression over tea.I’m playing Ever, Jane, a virtual roleplaying game by Judy L Tyrer, formerly of Linden Labs, which created the seminal online world Second Life. As avid fans of Jane Austen, Tyrer and her team at 3 Turn Productions have worked to unify the worlds of Austen’s writing, from Lady Susan to Sense and Sensibility, turning them into Tyrehampton, a place where women in bonnets lounge about in day rooms and dissect their rivals. Continue reading...

Twitter selects a small number of accounts to test long tweets, and users instantly rise to the challenge of wordier jokesTwitter’s decision to double its character limit to 280 has not been received with universal acclaim. Even – make that especially – on Twitter.Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, broke the news on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Lawyers for US firm – which was stripped of its London licence last week – say it has not introduced new employment practices

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Wednesday. Continue reading...

The site is polling users about how they perceive it but declining to publish the results. Answer these survey questions and let us know your thoughtsIs Facebook having an existential crisis? The company has been asking users a stream of questions that indicate some wear and tear in the company’s previously optimistic outlook.Is Facebook good for the world? Does it care about its users? Is it making the world better or worse for people having a tough time in life? Does my butt look big in this? (OK, that last one was a lie.) Continue reading...

British inventor, whose company has been working on vehicle since 2015, says it will launch in 2020British inventor Sir James Dyson has announced plans to build an electric car that will be “radically different” from current models and go on sale in 2020.The billionaire who revolutionised the vacuum cleaner said 400 engineers in Wiltshire had been working since 2015 on the £2.5bn project. Continue reading...

Have you always wanted a smartwatch but don’t want to wear a watch? How about a vibrating denim jacket that connects to the internet? Anyone?Google and Levi Strauss have partnered to make a “smart jacket”, and the end result is exactly as good as you’d expect from a collaboration between the companies that brought you a set of glasses people actively hated and a hideous touch-sensitive watch (that one was Levi’s).The apparel, a $350 denim jacket branded as “Levi’s Commuter Trucker Jacket with Jacquard by Google”, is the first product of a two-year-long collaboration between the two firms that started back in May 2015 with the intention of making a pair of “smart jeans”. The idea was to use a newly designed conductive fabric to allow the garment to send data and power without the need for wires. Continue reading...

The stereotypes of young, angry, pale and isolated gamers are wrong. Gamers of all ages play for connection, for relaxation or the intellectual challengeIn our high-vocational stress household, the most volcanic tension usually erupts over control of the PlayStation. I’m still – still – absorbed in the game of Fallout 4 I started a year ago, with thousands of hours spent on perfecting the aesthetics of post-apocalyptic settlement-building. My partner prefers a wordless immersion in the splattery worlds of first-person shooters and war games but we reconcile over rounds of two-player Diablo, fighting demons and hoarding treasure together.I’ve come a long way from the handheld Donkey Kong I cherished as a child, or the Pitfall caves I explored on a home PC, or the small parties of teens that gathered to play Sonic the Hedgehog on the loungeroom TV. The demands of fun are more complex now – but the need for fun remains the same. Continue reading...

Kajal Odedra, UK director of Change.org, says the beauty of the platform is that anyone can start a petitionRegarding Luke Samuel’s letter (25 September) about Uber’s petition, which the company started on Change.org, anyone can use Change.org to campaign about the issues that matter to them. That is the beauty of our platform: everyone has access. No matter who you are, you have the freedom to sign petitions you care about, or even start an opposing petition. This is why we’ve seen hundreds of thousands of people turn to Change.org in the last few days on either side of the Uber debate.Our mission is to empower people everywhere to create the change they want to see. The signatures on Uber’s petition were driven by their customers, rather than advertising on our site. We no longer have organisations advertising on our platform and have shifted our business model so that it is powered by people. You can now become a subscriber of Change.org or chip in to help specific campaigns get seen by more people. Continue reading...

Luke Samuel questions the validity of the online petition supporting the platform, while other readers worry about the way companies like Uber and Ryanair treat their staffOn Friday Uber was stripped of its licence to operate in London due to repeated infractions of regulations around safety (Uber loses licence to operate in London, 23 September). This follows the long-standing concerns about how Uber operates – its dubious taxation arrangements, its corporate model (loss-making, then raising costs and reducing driver pay) and its non-recognition of any worker benefits (sick pay, contracts, holiday etc). The company will appeal anyway, meaning the service will continue potentially for months or potentially even years, irrespective of outcome.The firm immediately took to the public petitions site Change.org, reproducing its own press release in the form of a petition to “Save your Uber in London”. Have I misunderstood the meaning of a public petition, or is a company producing a petition to protect its own profits something of a confused perversion of this long-standing mode of political participation? Continue reading...

Ride-hailing group’s London manager says it has not been asked to make changes but would ‘like to know what we can do’Uber will be fighting for its future on two fronts this week, as the ride-hailing service attempts to reverse the revocation of its London licence while appealing against a landmark ruling on the way it engages its drivers.The dual efforts will come against the backdrop of the company being branded a “disgrace” by the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, while the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, said Transport for London (TfL) had raised “serious concerns” about safety but suggested Uber would have an opportunity to “mend its ways”. Continue reading...

Alfa Romeo’s romantic sports cars have been turning heads for years, but the new Giulietta isn’t a keeperPrice: £18,555

Sadiq Khan defends TfL’s decision to revoke licence over security concernsMore than 600,000 people have signed a petition calling for Transport for London to reverse its decision to strip Uber of its licence in the capital, which the company’s chief executive suggested could delay the rollout of electric vehicles and wheelchair-accessible transport.The Observer also understands that 20,000 Uber drivers have emailed the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who defended TfL’s decision on Saturday amid a growing backlash. “I know that Uber has become a popular service for many Londoners – but it would be wrong for TfL to license Uber if there was any way this could pose a threat to Londoners’ safety,” Khan said. Continue reading...

Are Silicon Valley’s giants at last being reined in by the regulators?Giuliana Ingegneri is worried about her father, Adriano. Since December he has combined his job as an Uber driver with stints at the family business. But on Friday, Transport for London’s bombshell announcement that the technology giant’s licence will not be renewed in the capital sent shockwaves through the Ingegneris’ Tooting home.“My dad helps out with the family carpet cleaning business so the flexible hours work well for him,” said Giuliana, 16. “He also has diabetes so it’s important he can work when he wants so he can attend his medical appointments. Sometimes he will work 20 hours a day and earn around £300 and on others he will only make £8 a day.” Continue reading...

After London stripped the service of its license, stories from Austin, Alaska and Denmark offer a preview of what could be next for the city’s transportationWhen Uber and Lyft abruptly ended services in Austin last year, 10,000 ride-share drivers lost their jobs overnight and riders across the Texas city were stranded.“It left us all in a lurch,” said Frances DeLaune, who was working as a driver when the taxi apps shut down service there in May 2016 after refusing to comply with local regulations. She recalled how some turned to crowd-sourcing on Facebook where passengers posted ride requests and drivers showed up to help strangers: “People were panicking.” Continue reading...

Taxi service should be assessed to ensure it is operating up to community standards, Transport Workers Union saysUber should be audited to ensure it is operating up to community standards, the Transport Workers Union secretary has said after the ride-hailing service was banned in London for not being “fit and proper”.Transport for London (TfL) has deemed the Silicon Valley technology giant was not fit and proper to hold a private vehicle hire licence and its current agreement will not be renewed when it expires on 30 September. Continue reading...

US ride-hailing company to appeal against ruling but new chief executive admits it is the ‘cost of a bad reputation’Uber has been stripped of its London licence in a surprise move that dealt a serious blow to one of Silicon Valley’s fastest rising companies and sparked an outcry from a coalition of customers, government ministers and drivers at the ride-hailing company.The firm’s application for a new licence in London was rejected by Transport for London on the basis that the company is not a “fit and proper” private car hire operator. Continue reading...

A head of the National Cybersecurity Centre predicts the most serious level of hacking will happen within yearsA “category one” cyber-attack, the most serious tier possible, will happen “sometime in the next few years”, a director of the National Cybersecurity Centre has warned.According to the agency, which reports to GCHQ and has responsibly for ensuring the UK’s information security, a category one cybersecurity incident requires a national government response. Continue reading...

Lauri Love is charged with masterminding a 2013 attack by Anonymous on US government websites. Will Britain allow him to spend the rest of his days in an American prison?• Read the text version hereSubscribe via Audioboom, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Acast & Sticher and join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter Continue reading...

Sources speaking exclusively to the Guardian reveal details of new phones and a smaller Google Home Mini smart speaker ahead of October launchGoogle is set to release two new smartphones, the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, as well as a smaller Google Home Mini smart speaker on 4 October, the Guardian has learned.The devices will be released at the Made by Google event scheduled to take place in San Francisco and will lead the company’s renewed hardware efforts as it attempts to take on Apple and Samsung in the premium smartphone and accessory market. Continue reading...

When Guardian reporter Olivia Solon was sent a rape threat, she posted a screenshot on Instagram. Then the Facebook-owned company made it an adInstagram used a user’s image which included the text “I will rape you before I kill you, you filthy whore!” to advertise its service on Facebook, the latest example of social media algorithms boosting offensive content.Related: Facebook to tighten ad targeting after antisemitic 'fail', says Sheryl Sandberg Continue reading...

Counter-terrorism expert says that, contrary to Theresa May’s assertion, technology companies are treating the problem of terrorist content seriouslyFacebook’s senior counter-terrorism strategist has dismissed Theresa May’s demand that the company should go “further and faster” to remove material created by terrorists and their supporters, describing the claim that it does not do enough as unhelpful.Artificial intelligence programs are being created to identify such material, and hundreds of people are employed to search for content that should be removed, said Brian Fishman, who manages the company’s global counter-terrorism policy. Continue reading...

Google is acquiring a $1bn chunk of HTC’s smartphone arm, including 2,000 employees and access to intellectual property, as it bets big on hardwareGoogle has announced it’s acquiring a $1.1bn chunk of HTC’s smartphone business, and with it providing the once leading Taiwanese phone brand a much needed lifeline. But what does Google want with part of a smartphone business?Google isn’t buying the whole of HTC, just a relatively large part of the Taipei-based company’s smartphone business and not its Vive virtual reality headset business. Google gains half of HTC’s research and development team – about 2,000 people – and a non-exclusive license for HTC’s intellectual property, allowing it to take advantage of some of HTC’s advances in smartphone technology. Continue reading...

Deal will not involve purchase of direct stake and HTC will continue to run its remaining phone businessGoogle has announced a deal to acquire part of Taiwanese firm HTC Corp’s smartphone operations for about $1bn.The deal will not involve the purchase of a direct stake and HTC will continue to run its remaining smartphone business. Continue reading...

A privileged young white woman gallivants around the developing world in search of adventure … is it Lara Croft or White Saviour Barbie?Remember White Saviour Barbie? It was big on Instagram last year. White Saviour Barbie only had one joke, but it was a doozy: it followed the adventures of a wide-eyed Barbie doll as she travelled through the developing world on a gap year in the naive assumption that she was somehow helping. “What better way to bless the villagers than a fresh coat of paint?!” she asked in one post. “Many of them don’t know the calming effect that just the right color can provide. I’m just doing what I can to help these huts become homes”.White Saviour Barbie is so popular that they’ve now made a movie about her, starring Alicia Vikander. True, they’ve called the movie Tomb Raider for some reason, but anyone with half a brain can see from the trailer that it’s really about White Saviour Barbie. Let’s run through some quick comparisons. Continue reading...