The lawyer for Marcus Hutchins, the cyber-expert who thwarted a global ransomware attack, says he denies charges brought against him in the US. Speaking on Saturday, Adrian Lobo says the 23-year-old will plead not guilty to six counts of creating and sharing the malware known as Kronos. Hutchins, who found a ‘kill-switch’ that derailed the attack that crippled the NHS in May, was granted bail under strict conditions that he pay $30,000 (£23,000) and remain in the US
My friend and colleague Stephanie Daman, who has died of cancer aged 56, was a formidable force in tackling the UK’s critical cybersecurity skills gap. She was also a founder member of the Get Safe Online scheme, a source of factual information on online safety, which kick-started her passion to educate and prepare the country for the risks of the future.Stephanie cared passionately about the industry she worked in, which protects individuals and companies from unintended or unauthorised access to their computers. From 2012 until her death, she was chief executive of Cyber Security Challenge UK, a not-for-profit, government-funded organisation that finds talented people and encourages them into jobs in cybersecurity. Continue reading...
While the Angry Birds movie balanced dumbed-down world with a smart script, this personification of smartphone symbols is just ‘meh’One thing no one needed this summer was a very rubbish version of Inside Out, that animated gem about the personified emotions inside the surreal landscape of a young girl’s mind. Here, instead of a mind, a smartphone, and instead of emotions, emojis: all the wacky little symbols that originated in Japan, not that you’d know that from this film.The Emoji Movie could in theory have been witty and sophisticated, like The Lego Movie – or even the Angry Birds movie – juxtaposing its apparently dumbed-down world with a smart script. But no. This is just a boilerplate animation, zestless, pointless. The idea is that the “Meh†emoji wants to express something more complicated, in effect to be something other than its assigned identity, and here I am prepared to concede that The Emoji Movie does in its way confront an existential problem that Inside Out arguably never solved. Continue reading...
Digital wallets linked to ransomware attack that crippled NHS hospitals are cleaned out, as law enforcement tries to track ownersMore than £108,000 in bitcoin paid by victims of the WannaCry ransomware attack, which crippled parts of the NHS as well as businesses in 150 countries worldwide, has been withdrawn from the digital wallets the funds were being held in.Nearly three months after the ransomware struck computers, locking up data, demanding ransoms and causing chaos in hospitals and firms including Spain’s Telefonica and FedEx, a total of £108,953 worth of bitcoin was withdrawn. The money, presumably moved by the hackers, was taken from three bitcoin wallets associated with WannaCry, according to tracking firm Elliptic. Continue reading...
by Olivia Solon in River Falls, Wisconsin on (#2Y4V4)
Olivia Solon felt more key fob than RoboCop after getting implanted with a microchip to make contactless purchases. But the future could hold much moreI took two deep breaths, then a tattooed piercer called Andy stabbed me in the fleshy part of my hand between the forefinger and thumb, injecting a tiny microchip encased in a glass capsule the size of a large grain of rice. And so I became the world’s lamest cyborg.The radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip, once registered, allows me to open doors, unlock computers and pay for items – provided those systems use the right software and have dedicated contactless chip readers. Continue reading...
Shares in the world’s most valuable company went up close to 6% in after-hours trading following the news, adding $40bn to Apple’s current valueApple shares soared to an all-time high on Tuesday afternoon after the tech company announced it had sold 41m iPhones in the last three months. Apple also appeared to scotch rumors that the iPhone 8 – the phone that will mark the 10th anniversary of the original model – has been delayed. Profits were up by 11.9%, to $8.72bn.The news was enough to send shares in the world’s most valuable company up close to 6% in after-hours trading – to $159 a share – adding close to $40bn to the value of the company. Continue reading...
As rents soar in Los Angeles and elsewhere, the room-sharing service can be helpful – but it has also faced some of the blame for the housing crisisI’ve never found scrubbing other people’s fecal matter from my toilet seat particularly fun, nor does sharing my shower appeal, and yet this is my daily routine.I’m an Airbnb host. It’s not that I enjoy losing my spare bedroom and my privacy to entertain out of town visitors: I use the platform to be able to pay rent while I go through a difficult financial time. Ten nights a month, I have to tolerate a stranger using my bathroom to get 20 nights blissfully alone with my son.
Cryptocurrencies are still more investments than way to pay, but their mainstream acceptability continues to grow, proper regulation will followCryptocurrencies are under the microscope as never before. Financial regulators in the US are concerned about the emergence of bitcoin and its digital cousins as speculative investments and have hinted that much tougher regulation is in the pipeline.Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which regulates the New York financial markets, issued an alert, saying it was “cautioning market participants that offers and sales of digital assets by ‘virtual’ organisations are subject to the requirements of the federal securities lawsâ€. Continue reading...
Dutch police arrest five men for allegedly using a modified van to break into and steal from a moving smartphone delivery vanDutch police have arrested five men suspected of stealing €500,000 (£448,000) of iPhones in a dangerous late-night heist from a moving truck akin to action scenes from Fast and Furious.Dutch police said that the five men, aged from 33 to 43 and all from Romania, allegedly raided a delivery truck full of iPhones on the A73 highway near Horst on the night of 24 July. Using a modified van, they drove close enough to the back of the truck to allow one of the suspects to climb onto it and break in through the doors while it was being driven down the road. Continue reading...
Elon Musk’s new mass market-aimed electric car has no directly visible speedometer, comes in two battery versions and isn’t a bad option for a sleepElon Musk revealed Tesla’s Model 3 is unlocked by a smartphone and doesn’t have a traditional key or fob among a host of other details at the delivery event for the first 30 mass-market electric cars over the weekend.
Ads targeted using profiles generated from individual voters’ stated interests are more successful in shifting attitudes according to Online Privacy FoundationUsing “psychographic†profiles of individual voters generated from publicly stated interests really does work, according to new research presented at the Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.The controversial practice allows groups to hone their messages to match the personality types of their targets during political campaigning, and is being used by firms including Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ to better target voters with political advertising with so-called “dark adsâ€. Continue reading...
Mark Zuckerberg’s new mission is to ‘bring the world closer together’. But Facebook groups can unite extremists as easily as they serve hobbyistsRicky Caya was looking for something. A 43-year-old postal service worker and father of two in Quebec, he felt unsettled and unconnected. “The great social movements of the 1960s, the American civil rights movement, flower power, the big trade union movements – people today don’t have that,†he said.So when a Facebook post crossed his news feed promoting a new organization that “sought to bring together good people without a voice to finally allow them to have strength in numbersâ€, Caya requested membership to the group and quickly became an active participant and leader. Continue reading...
Facebook COO says equal numbers of men and women should apply for jobs and run for political positions to address gender gapFacebook’s Sheryl Sandberg has called for public policy changes to help improve women’s pay and claimed that women underestimate their worth, which prevents them from asking for wage rises.Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs on Sunday she believed job openings should be contested by equal numbers of women and men. Continue reading...
Running out of storage, overwhelmed by spam or worried about your privacy? These tips will help you clean up your online actIf your laptop is running low on storage, Windows’s built-in Disk Cleanup tool can find and wipe unneeded files – just search for it in the Start menu. Mac OS Sierra has a similar feature, but it’s well hidden: to find it, open the System Information tool, then open the Window menu and select “storage managementâ€. You’ll see options for saving space and clearing out clutter. Continue reading...
While Huffington doesn’t want to be Uber’s next CEO, she’s been putting in the hard yards trying to turn the company’s tarnished reputation aroundThe next Uber CEO will be charged with sweeping up multitudes of corporate sins. In their in-tray will be a daunting array of problems and issues to resolve in the wake of Travis Kalanick’s high-profile departure last month.These include rehabilitating the company internally and externally as it recovers from scandals including the sexual harassment investigation that saw more than 20 people fired in June; video of Kalanick berating an Uber driver; and the company’s recent admission it had underpaid drivers in New York City by millions of dollars. Continue reading...
Plan would cover 1.4 million homes but rivals warn that consumers will end up footing the billBT has offered to make high-speed broadband available to the one million-plus rural homes left behind in the internet revolution, potentially accelerating the process by which every household will have access to fast connections.BT’s subsidiary Openreach, which controls the UK’s broadband network, has told ministers it will spend £600m to ensure 1.4 million rural homes have access to a minimum speed of 10Mb by 2020, meeting a Conservative pledge. Continue reading...
The company doesn’t have a great track record of keeping its job-creation promises, for one. Then there’s the issue of worker conditions in ChinaThe announcement by the Taiwanese giant Foxconn that it will build an LCD-manufacturing facility in Wisconsin worth an estimated $10bn was met with considerable fanfare.But the state has a troubled history in matters of economic development, and the company, a supplier to Apple, Google, Amazon and other tech giants, has a lackluster record when it comes to fulfilling its promises. The news should raise red flags. Continue reading...
With half a million orders for the $35,000, 350km-range vehicle, the upstart carmaker faces its biggest testTesla boss Elon Musk has handed over the first of what he hopes will be a mass-market electric car to employee buyers, setting the stage for the biggest test yet of the company’s plans to revolutionise the auto industry.
A ban on pedestrians looking at mobile phones or texting while crossing the street will take effect in Hawaii’s largest city with fines of $15 to $99A ban on pedestrians looking at mobile phones or texting while crossing the street will take effect in Hawaii’s largest city in late October, as Honolulu becomes the first major US city to pass legislation aimed at reducing injuries and deaths from “distracted walkingâ€.The ban comes as cities around the world grapple with how to protect phone-obsessed “smartphone zombies†from injuring themselves by stepping into traffic or running into stationary objects. Continue reading...
Report calls on Ofcom to get tough on providers that promise fast speeds but fail to deliverMillions of broadband customers who do not get the connection speeds they pay for should receive compensation, MPs have said.A new report calls on Ofcom, the media and telecoms regulator, to get tough on broadband providers that promise fast speeds but fail to deliver. Continue reading...
The smartphone has claimed another victim as the once best-selling app-free music players are taken off the Silicon Valley company’s rosterApple has killed off the last remaining app-free music players in its roster, the iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle, leaving nothing but multi-use, connected devices in the brave new world of streaming, apps and games.
You might come to games to do crazy things you couldn’t get away with in real life, but many players replicate their day-to-day habits in the virtual worldIn a lot of ways – and this may come as a shock, so brace yourself – video games are not like real-life. From Final Fantasy to Grand Theft Auto, the central idea behind our favourite blockbusters is escapism. You come to these amazing, spectacular places to do crazy stuff – to battle monsters, steal treasure, crash fast cars and blow up planes – stuff you can’t get away with in reality. As the classic PlayStation advert once brilliantly summed up, you come to conquer worlds.But weirdly, as game visuals have become more realistic and more detailed, a lot of players have found themselves replicating real-life habits and routines in the virtual world, even when it serves no mechanical function. From careful parking to routine politeness, it seems we can’t completely abandon ourselves to pixellated anarchy – there are standards we mustn’t let go. Having tweeted about this behaviour recently, we were inundated with responses from other players who have similarly fastidious routines. Continue reading...
Venture capitalist Anis Uzzaman alleges male rival published fake blogpost purporting to be an anonymous woman ‘taken advantage of’ by UzzamanAn anonymous blogpost accusing a Silicon Valley venture capitalist of sexual misconduct was written by a male executive who pretended to be a female victim of harassment in order to damage the reputation of a competitor, according to a lawsuit.The complaint filed by Anis Uzzaman, a prominent tech investor and CEO of Fenox Venture Capital, alleged that a male rival CEO published a fake online account purporting to be an unnamed woman who was “sexually taken advantage of†by Uzzaman. The blogpost, which said Uzzaman pressured the author to go to his hotel room after a business meeting, was written by Brandon Katayama Hill, founder and CEO of a San Francisco branding and marketing agency called Btrax that competes with Fenox, according to the suit. Continue reading...
Shares hit record high after figure is much higher than expected, with total revenue climbing 44.8% thanks to increased mobile video ad salesFacebook has delivered a much higher-than-expected quarterly profit, driven by a sharp increase in sales of mobile video ads, sending its shares to an all-time high.Total revenue rose 44.8% to $9.32bn from the same period in 2016, of which Facebook posted a profit of $3.89bn – up a whopping 71% from the year before. Continue reading...
Following the announcement petrol and diesel engine cars will be banned from sale in 2040, the car of the future is up for grabsWhat will the car look like by the time the petrol and diesel combustion engine is banned from sale? Will we still be driving, or will we be living in a utopia filled with gleaming white pods silently whizzing about the streets ferrying people to and fro?The car of the future is still in flux. While many agree that it will be autonomous, will hopefully be accident-free, probably battery powered and will likely be radically different on the inside, if still familiar on the outside, there are broadly two routes down which the car can wind to 2040. Continue reading...
Divisive multimedia feature adopted by Facebook, Twitter and others could soon be a feature of Google search resultsGoogle has begun testing putting one of the most divisive features of the modern web experience, the auto-playing video, directly into search results.
How did a title about fathers dating each other become number one on Steam? It seems previously niche genres are suddenly hitting the mainstreamRobert is a bad boy who enjoys whisky, leather jackets and skulking in alleyways. Brian is a large, jolly chap who looks a tiny bit like the Ghost of Christmas Present from The Muppets Christmas Carol. Damien is a cape-wearing goth who loves blood, hates garlic, and wonders why Hot Topic would describe a ruffled blouse as “Victorian†when it’s so clearly Edwardian. Ugh, the savages.All of these seemingly disparate men have one thing in common: they’re dads looking to date other dads in a new game called Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator. Launched earlier in July, it’s currently holding the top spot on Steam, the dominant online PC games store better known for sci-fi shooters and serious fantasy role-playing adventures. Excitement round the title was so high, that when the release was delayed by a few hours, co-developers Vernon Shaw and Leighton Gray had to post an apology to wildly expectant fans on Twitter. It received over 17,000 likes. Continue reading...
Want a premium and powerful yet small and light laptop that isn’t an Apple product? Here are the best 13in alternativesIt used to be that if you wanted a premium, powerful but relatively small and light laptop, there weren’t many good options apart from Apple’s MacBook Pro. These days that certainly isn’t the case with loads of excellent options from the world of Windows 10 PCs.With Apple’s new 13in MacBook Pro not being everyone’s cup of tea, here are some of the best 13in alternatives, all with high-resolution screens, seventh generation Intel Core i5 or i7 chips and power enough to do almost anything, perhaps even a little gaming. Continue reading...
A new breed of video and audio manipulation tools allow for the creation of realistic looking news footage, like the now infamous fake Obama speechIn an age of Photoshop, filters and social media, many of us are used to seeing manipulated pictures – subjects become slimmer and smoother or, in the case of Snapchat, transformed into puppies.However, there’s a new breed of video and audio manipulation tools, made possible by advances in artificial intelligence and computer graphics, that will allow for the creation of realistic looking footage of public figures appearing to say, well, anything. Trump declaring his proclivity for water sports. Hillary Clinton describing the stolen children she keeps locked in her wine cellar. Tom Cruise finally admitting what we suspected all along … that he’s a Brony. Continue reading...
The media-powering technology was once inescapable – but it began to fall out of favor after Apple decided not to use it on the iPhoneAdobe Flash, a once ubiquitous technology used to power most of the media content found online, will be retired at the end of 2020, the software company announced Tuesday.Adobe – along with Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Mozilla – said support for Flash would ramp down across the internet in phases over the next three years. Continue reading...
Musk described the Facebook CEO’s knowledge of the field as ‘limited’ after Zuckerberg publicly dismissed AI doomsday warnings as ‘irresponsible’Tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have entered into a public squabble about artificial intelligence in which Musk described the Facebook CEO’s knowledge of the field as “limitedâ€.Related: Elon Musk: regulate AI to combat 'existential threat' before it's too late Continue reading...
The cartoonist has garnered more than 1.3 million fans on Facebook with his crude illustrations made using the painting app. Here is his response to the news that the program is being dropped from Windows Continue reading...
Company will increase number of workers focusing on Prime Video service in capital from 450 to 900Amazon is to double the number of research and development staff it employs in London.The company is increasing the number of workers at its development centre in the capital from 450 to 900 as part of a drive to expand its UK workforce to 24,000 by the end of 2017. Continue reading...
Microsoft says that it will put 32-year-old program on the Windows Store, but that won’t help office workers pining for some impromptu creative sessionsAfter the tremendous outpouring of love across the internet for arguably the greatest Windows program ever, Microsoft has announced that it will save MS Paint by putting it on the Windows Store.Following the company’s announcement that the 32-year-old Paint is now deprecated, meaning that it is “not in active development and might be removed in future releasesâ€, Microsoft put out a blogpost in response to the anguished outcry at the potential removal of an old friend. Continue reading...
The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, which premieres at the Sante Fe Opera this weekend, dramatizes Jobs’s life in a unique way. We spoke with one of its co-creators to find out how the idea was bornWhen San Francisco bay area-based composer and electronic music DJ Mason Bates recently visited the childhood home of Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Jobs, he was in awe.“It all started in that garage,†Bates said in a hushed, reverent voice, as we pulled up in the composer’s 1970s Alfa Romeo outside the nondescript bungalow at 2066 Crist Drive in Los Altos. Located on an un-trafficked suburban street, the building’s only distinguishing feature was the “no trespassing†sign on the austere patch of lawn out front. Continue reading...
by Alex Calvin, Rupert Higham and Matt Kamen on (#2X6S8)
Shooting and platform classics are reworked for the Nintendo Switch with excellent results, while the 3DS gets a high-speed nostalgia tripNintendo Switch, Nintendo, cert: 7
by Gwyn Topham Transport correspondent on (#2X4N0)
Owners of drones over 250g will need to show they understand safety and privacy laws as government acts after dozens of near-misses with aircraftDrones will have to be registered and users forced to take a safety awareness test under new regulations announced by the UK government.
Latest Samsung stylus-equipped Note phablet comes after disastrous Note 7 battery issues that led to two recalls and cost the company billions of poundsSamsung is to unveil the follow-up to its exploding Galaxy Note 7, expected to be called the Galaxy Note 8, on 23 August.The South Korean electronics firm posted to Twitter a “save the date†for the unveiling of the Note 8 at one of the company’s “Unpacked†events, complete with a gif showing a representation of the new design. Continue reading...
The Guardian has been covering video games for more than 20 years. Over that time the games, their creators and their players have matured and diversified — and so has our approach to criticism and analysis
Group of volunteers obsessively tracks and reports Isis’s most prominent recruiters and propagandists, and tries to block the spread of their propagandaColonel Kurtz used to spend hours playing social games like Farmville. Now he hunts terrorists on the internet.Related: Counter-terrorism was never meant to be Silicon Valley's job. Is that why it's failing? Continue reading...
Angela Washko tells us how she immersed herself in men’s rights communities and made a dating simulator about pickup artistsAngela Washko is a games developer, writer and teacher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Her work on online society has given her a unique and evolving angle on the nexus of men’s rights activists, anti-feminists and “seduction coaching†communities online, and here she shares the experiences that led to her latest work: The Game – The Game, a dating simulator game starring notable pickup artists. Continue reading...
Final step in three-year legal battle between Google and France will determine whether nations get to choose whether data is removedThe European court of justice (ECJ) is set to rule on a landmark case over whether or not the so-called “right to be forgotten†can and should stretch beyond EU borders.It will be the final step in a three-year legal battle between Google and France to determine how far the search engine should go to guarantee the privacy of European citizens who want their pasts to be wiped from the historical record. Continue reading...
Social media company widens rollout of new feature that automatically plays videos with sound in the News Feed after ‘positive feedback’Facebook’s long-dreaded update that switches on sound for autoplaying videos by default is starting to roll out causing users to lash out on social media. Here’s how to turn it off.First Facebook rolled out autoplaying videos in the News Feed on its app by default, causing users to complain about the increased data consumption from their mobile plans. Now those same autoplaying videos will start pumping out sound in a feature, as one user put it, “literally nobody asked forâ€. Continue reading...
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