Technology | The Guardian

Revolutionary, life-changing... a bit annoying? Guardian readers around the world on a decade of iPhones and the wider smartphone revolution

A letter from Labour’s Frank Field urges ministers to step in to improve the lot of Uber drivers and others working in the gig economyThe charge sheet against Travis Kalanick, and the Uber board as a whole, is a lengthy one (End of the road – Uber’s investors decide chief is liability after avalanche of claims, 22 June). There is, however, one major omission.The rampant exploitation of Uber’s tens of thousands of drivers under Kalanick’s watch should be at the very top of that charge sheet. The fact that it hardly features is hugely concerning. Continue reading...

Digital security researchers say malware attack that spread from Ukraine appeared to be focused on damaging IT systemsA ransomware attack that affected at least 2,000 individuals and organisations worldwide on Tuesday appears to have been deliberately engineered to damage IT systems rather than extort funds, according to security researchers.The attack began in Ukraine, and spread through a hacked Ukrainian accountancy software developer to companies in Russia, western Europe and the US. The software demanded payment of $300 (£230) to restore the user’s files and settings. Continue reading...

Sadler’s Wells, London

Cumulative effect of missteps led the Guardian to overstate the potential impact on the security of users’ messagingThe Guardian was wrong to report last January that the popular messaging service WhatsApp had a security flaw so serious that it was a huge threat to freedom of speech.

Apple’s iPhone is turning 10, and we want to know if the smartphone has changed your life – and if so, whether it’s been for the better“A widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device.”That’s how Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, which was released 10 years ago this Thursday. A revolutionary concept on release, smartphones are now so ubiquitous you’re probably reading this article on one. Continue reading...

Companies have been crippled by global cyberattack, the second major ransomware crime in two months. We answer the key questionsMany organizations in Europe and the US have been crippled by a ransomware attack known as “Petya”. The malicious software has spread through large firms including the advertiser WPP, food company Mondelez, legal firm DLA Piper and Danish shipping and transport firm Maersk, leading to PCs and data being locked up and held for ransom.

The European commission is not showing signs of anti-American bias – its actions will benefit consumers worldwideLet’s start by laying one falsehood to rest. In fining Google €2.42bn (£2.14bn), the European commission is not engaged in a form of underhand trade warfare against US technology companies. Instead, Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition commissioner, is addressing a central commercial question of the digital age: to what extent should companies such as Google be able to exploit their dominance in one area to gain advantage in another?Accusations of anti-American bias don’t hold water if one views the commission’s pro-competition patrols in aggregate. In other industries with different competition complaints, Brussels has been strong in dishing out fines against European firms. Just ask the truck makers – all European – who copped a collective €2.93bn fine last year for colluding on prices. Continue reading...

Google’s mail app now offers a range of AI-generated responses. Is modern life about to devolve into one long Turing test? No thanks!Confusing times at Google. The company has announced it will stop automatically scanning users’ emails in order to provide targeted adverts. At almost the same moment, though, it has decided to launch an auto-reply system that scans one’s emails and generates possible responses from which you can choose.The new functionality, added to the app store versions of Gmail, works by analysing a large, anonymised body of emails to generate possible responses. Machine-learning systems then rank these to pick the “best responses to the email at hand”. Continue reading...

The developer behind retro-tinged shooters Super Stardust and ResoGun returns with an astonishing twin-stick masterpieceThere is a famous story behind the making of Robotron 2084, the seminal 1982 arcade game which provides the clear inspiration for Nex Machina. Designer Eugene Jarvis, the genius behind hit coin-op Defender, broke his wrist in a car accident and found himself unable to use a fire button. Determined to keep working on a new game project, he and colleague Larry DeMar hacked together their own controller using two joysticks; one to move the onscreen character, one to fire a weapon. The twin-stick shooter was born.Thirty-five years later, we have the latest title from Housemarque Games, the Finish studio that’s spent two decades rediscovering and perfecting classic arcade game dynamics. Its Super Stardust and Resogun titles are exemplary old school scrolling shooters, catching the speed and style of arcade blasters but enriching them with modern era visual exuberance. Nex Machina continues that legacy – and then some. Continue reading...

The winning entries in the annual iPhone photography awards have been announced, chosen from thousands of entries submitted from around the world. The overall winner: children in Iraq playing against a a backdrop of oil wells set aflame by Isis Continue reading...

Classic 1990s console returns with 21 games including Super Mario Kart, Secret of Mana and an unreleased sequel to Star FoxFor some it was the greatest video game console of all time, a 1990s treasure trove of legendary titles such as Super Mario Kart, Super Metroid and Yoshi’s Island – and now, not altogether unpredictably, it’s back. Continue reading...

The Fire HD 8 has always played second fiddle to its smaller sibling, but with twice the storage, better screen and speakers, that’s no longer the caseAmazon’s bigger, 8in HD version of its rock-bottom tablet, the Fire HD 8, has always played second fiddle to the £50 Fire 7, but not any more.

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft announced Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism to focus on solutions, research and partnershipsFacebook, YouTube, Twitter and Microsoft have created a joint forum to counter terrorism following years of criticisms that the technology corporations have failed to block violent extremists and propaganda on their platforms.The Silicon Valley companies announced the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism on Monday, saying the collaboration would focus on technological solutions, research and partnerships with governments and civic groups. Continue reading...

Sector says current threat coming to the fore because of trend towards decentralised power plantsConcern over the threat posed by cyber-attacks on power stations and electricity grids is “off the scale” in the UK energy sector, according to a leading industry figure.No other country in the world has an energy industry as worried about the risk from cyber threats, such as the WannaCry ransomware attack that recently hit the NHS, the former chief of National Grid told the Guardian. Continue reading...

From all-nighters at the office to insensitive male coworkers, working mothers and mothers-to-be often describe the tech world as hostile to their needsSara Mauskopf was nine months pregnant and about to go on maternity leave, when her boss, the Postmates CEO Bastian Lehmann, mentioned her by name at an all-hands meeting: staff would no longer be able to use one of the company’s conference rooms, Lehmann said, because Mauskopf would need it pump breast milk when she returned to work.“I felt very called out and embarrassed,” recalled Mauskopf, who was the delivery startup’s director of product at the time. “It singled me out as the reason for the conversion and made me feel like I was taking something away from everyone.” Continue reading...

From the Bioshock collection for less than a tenner to Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor at 80% off, we’ve been searching for the best Steam dealsForget Glastonbury, forget Wimbledon – the big event many of us look forward to at this time of year is the Steam Summer Sale. Every June, the online PC games store slashes prices on dozens of titles, sometimes down to a couple of pounds, prompting a digital feeding frenzy.The 2017 sale began on Wednesday night, and here are some of the must-have bargains we’ve spotted so far. Add your own findings in the comments section! Continue reading...

Firm’s Online Civil Courage Initiative, already launched in Germany and France, aims to help charities and NGOs identify and eliminate hate speachFacebook is to step up its attempts to tackle extremist material on the internet by educating charities and other non-government organisations about how to counter hate speech.The technology company will launch the Online Civil Courage Initiative in the UK on Friday, which includes training organisations about how to monitor and respond to extremist content and the creation of a dedicated support desk at Facebook where concerns can be flagged up. Continue reading...

As Uber CEO departs, questions have been raised as to why its CTO – who was included in a viral post about discrimination and harassment – still has a jobThe resignation of Uber’s embattled CEO Travis Kalanick has led some to question why the company’s chief technology officer (CTO), who was included in an engineer’s viral account of sexual harassment and discrimination, has kept his job.Kalanick announced his departure this week after months of scandals, most notably the allegations of former employee Susan Fowler, who published a detailed blogpost in February about rampant sexism at Uber and management’s repeated refusal to respond to her complaints. Continue reading...

Personal data, including names, addresses, voter registration details and social media posts, made vulnerable because of improper security settingsA data trove owned by the Republican National Committee (RNC) containing personal details of nearly every registered voter in the US was left unsecured for nearly two weeks earlier this month due to an improperly configured security setting, internet security firm UpGuard revealed on Monday.The data, which includes names, birth dates, addresses, voter registration details and social media posts, was available to download by anyone who knew to look for it from 1 June through 14 June when the oversight was corrected. Continue reading...

Half of the children in poll using devices unsupervised and two-thirds of families report conflict related to screen timeA third of preschoolers and two-thirds of primary school-aged children own smartphones or tablets – and 50% of them are using them unsupervised, the latest Australian Child Health Poll shows.

New smartphone continues phone’s USP of refined metal design and fluid user experience, but it’s not quite the bargain its predecessors wereThe new OnePlus 5 has big shoes to fill following, as it does, the excellent OnePlus 3 and 3T, which managed to undercut the competition on price and beat them on design. So, more expensive than ever, can OnePlus’s latest smartphone pull off the same trick in 2017?

With great battery life, smooth performance and a beautiful screen, this would the best notebook PC around if it wasn’t for the lack of portsThe Surface Laptop is Microsoft’s first true Surface-brand notebook - following the company’s Surface Pro tablet and the Surface Book laptop-tablet hybrid – but there’s something very unMicrosoft about it: great design.Functionally, it’s about as standard as a notebook gets in 2017. There’s a full keyboard and precision trackpad and a small array of ports. The screen doesn’t detach but it is 10-point multi-touch and it works with the Surface Pen stylus. But aesthetically the Surface Laptop offers something new. Continue reading...

With its vicar-riding-to-evensong upright riding position, plus sprung seatpost and suspension forks, it glided me over potholes with barely a joltAs you pedal away from the lights, zooming ahead of all the other riders, the Gazelle Orange C7 inspires an odd mixture of emotions. It’s part exhilaration and part mild guilt, an apologetic attitude that’s quite British. We still view electric assist bikes, or e-bikes, as somehow cheating, or for the old or infirm, yet on the continent they’re far more mainstream: in Gazelle’s Dutch home, say, more than a quarter of all new bikes have electric assist.The Orange C7 is in many ways a traditional (if posh) Dutch bike, with its full chain case and mudguards, built-in lights and a sliding steel lock on the rear wheel. But it is also hi-tech, as you’d hope for £1,900, which is pricey even by e-bikes’ standards. The mid-mounted 250w motor provides its oomph directly to the cranks. Older e-bikes, whose power generally came via one of the wheels, tended to jerk as the motor kicked in; then, when it cut out at just over 15mph (the maximum allowed by law), it felt as if you’d hit a headwind. The Gazelle’s handlebar-mounted display includes a bar indicating the electric output, but I only really noticed I was on solely human power when the speedometer declined to rise further at about 17mph. Then again, you’ll need some outside help riding this behemoth: its official weight is just under 23kg, not counting the 2kg-plus battery. I switched off the power while riding up one hill and got to the top, but it wasn’t much fun. Continue reading...

My father, Peter Seaton, who has died aged 91, was a senior design engineer who started his career as a shipwright apprentice and went on to work on several landmark defence projects, including the Thunderbird missile and UK-3 satellite.Born in Gillingham, Kent, the son of Henry Seaton, an electrical engineer, and his wife Ellen (nee Bonnick), he was one of four children: an older sister, Pat, older brother, Harry, and younger brother, John, who was born the day after Henry’s death following kidney surgery. Ellen courageously brought up the family by earning a meagre wage as an outworker seamstress at Chatham Dockyard making naval clothing. Continue reading...

UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has linked recent attacks to the North Korean-affiliated hacking team Lazarus Group, according to reportsBritain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has reportedly attributed the WannaCry malware, which affected the NHS and other organisations worldwide in May, to the North Korean-affiliated hacking team Lazarus Group.The NCSC, which is the public face of the British defence against cyber-attacks and works closely with the UK surveillance agency GCHQ, said it would neither confirm or deny the reports. But a separate source confirmed the NCSC had led the international investigation into the WannaCry bug and completed its assessment within the last few weeks. Continue reading...

Games have come a long way in putting fictional women in lead roles – but yet again it was largely white men that dominated the stages at the press conferencesFor most gamers, early June is a kind of video-game Christmas. Summer brings E3 and its associated press conferences with the biggest names in publishing and development telling us what games and consoles to expect in the coming year.For the most part, audiences are shown cinematic trailer after cinematic trailer of grizzled white men brandishing guns on missions they’ve “just gotta take alone” introduced by white dudes in a blazer/T-shirt/jeans/trainers combo. Continue reading...

Tech giant could receive record penalty for favouring its comparison shopping service in its search result pagesGoogle is reportedly facing a record-breaking fine from Brussels of more than €1bn (£875m) over alleged abuse of its market dominance.EU officials are expected to announce in the coming weeks that the tech giant has been guilty of manipulating its search engine results to favour its new Google Shopping service, which offers price comparisons on products. Continue reading...

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

Artist Pippin Barr explores a virtual world where computer game visuals meet the work of artists Donald Judd and Gregor Schneider

A security lapse that affected more than 1,000 workers forced one moderator into hiding – and he still lives in constant fear for his safetyFacebook put the safety of its content moderators at risk after inadvertently exposing their personal details to suspected terrorist users of the social network, the Guardian has learned.

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

The move follows a damning report on workplace culture and a scandal-ridden six months that saw at least 20 staff fired over harassment and discrimination

Discovery of new malware shows vulnerability of critical infrastructure, just months after the WannaCry ransomware took out NHS computersSix months on from a hacking attack that caused a blackout in Kiev, Ukraine, security researchers have warned that the malware that was used in the attack would be “easy” to convert to cripple infrastructure in other nations.The discovery of the malware, dubbed “Industroyer” and “Crash Override”, highlights the vulnerability of critical infrastructure, just months after the WannaCry ransomware took out NHS computers across the UK. Continue reading...

The embattled prime minister is meeting French president Emmanuel Macron to renew her campaign against Facebook et al – but will it be worth the trip?The British prime minster Theresa May is expected to renew her long-running campaign against technology companies by announcing international sanctions for those that fail to take sufficient action against terrorist propaganda, in a joint statement with French president Emmanuel Macron.The two leaders, meeting in Paris on Tuesday, will discuss creating a legal requirement for technology companies to aid in the fight against terrorism online and reportedly face fines for failing to comply, in the wake of a series of attacks in the UK and France over the past year. Continue reading...

Decision illustrates shift in strategy by Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle division from creating a new kind of public transport to adapting commercial vehiclesWhen Google unveiled its brand new self-driving car prototype in May 2014 it looked like a shot at a new type of public transport system filled with pod-like autonomous cars. Now that utopian dream seems at an end. Waymo is killing off the specifically designed “Firefly” in favour of an adapted Chrysler van.

This buccaneering multiplayer game is truly collaborative, with everything from digging for gold to fighting off sharks undertaken as part of a groupWe’re often told by veteran designers that the best game stories are the ones told, and experienced, by the players themselves. The little moments of personal drama, victory or tragedy that happen to you and only you while exploring a world, can be more memorable than any big cinematic crescendo.Sea of Thieves, the online co-operative pirate adventure from Rare, is a game based around those moments. It isn’t just about sharing tasks, it’s about co-authoring stories. At the beginning of the game you’re thrust into a galleon with a small group of other players, and from here you must explore the ocean, using treasure maps to locate islands loaded with loot, before digging up the goods and clearing the heck out. At any moment, however, the game’s seamless multiplayer system may throw another ship full of players into the same waters – they may fight you for your gold, trade with you or suggest an alliance, but it’s all planned and decided by the players themselves. Continue reading...

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

New 5.5in smartphone might be bulky, but its super-shiny back and pressure sensitive controls make up for itOnce the darling of the smartphone world, HTC has been struggling to gain traction in a market dominated by Samsung and Apple with its solid but bland devices. Now the U11 is here and it’s squeezable (no really), can the former smartphone leader turn it around?

AR uses a phone’s camera and other sensor to enhance what appears on screen, and may have a billion users by 2021Smartphone makers have been getting anxious in the past couple of years. People have been hanging on to their phones for longer, meaning slower sales in China, the US and Europe. They need something new to reignite the market, and now Apple thinks it has found the elixir to persuade everyone to buy new phones again.The company is pinning its hopes on “augmented reality” or AR, which uses a combination of the phone’s camera and other sensors to enhance what it shows on the screen - to show, on your phone or tablet’s screen, things that aren’t there but which you might like to see. Continue reading...

Boris Johnson’s ‘leaked’ show of support for the prime minister highlights how the app has become the medium of choice in WestminsterPolitical deals used to be done in smoke-filled rooms, but parliamentary plotting nowadays happens mostly on WhatsApp.On Sunday night, a message sent by Boris Johnson to a private WhatsApp chat group for Tory MPs were “leaked” to the media. However the text, professing support for Theresa May, also looked very much like it was intended to be leaked. Politicians know by now which of their WhatsApp groups are a circle of trust and which ones have political foes lurking within. Continue reading...

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

New console, previously known as Project Scorpio, will challenge Sony’s PlayStation 4 ProMicrosoft’s new Xbox model is named Xbox One X and will ship on 7 November with a $499/£449 price tag, the company has revealed.The final name of the machine, previously known as Project Scorpio, reflects the title of the tweaked Xbox One S machine, launched last August. Continue reading...

Alex Hunter is back for a second season in Electronic Arts’ latest football sim, but on-pitch changes such as variable AI tactics are the key to longevity“To some, Fifa is life.” This may sound like hyberbole from the game’s creative director Matt Prior, but he has a point. Electronic Arts’ football series operates on a scale beyond the dreams of most video game developers. Last year’s entry achieved sales of 1.1m in its first week – 300,000 more copies than Adele’s 25, the fastest-selling album of all time.For a sizeable number of those 1 million Fifa 17 customers, a big attraction of the game was The Journey, a Mass-Effect-style story mode with branching elements, putting you into the boots of a young pro, Alex Hunter, looking to make it in the Premier League. Unlike anything previously attempted by any football title, it was also successful – Prior says 30 million people worldwide have played it. A follow-up felt inevitable, then, and sure enough one of Fifa 18’s marquee features is Hunter’s return. Continue reading...

Attorney general isn’t just proposing a backdoor into encrypted communications – it’s a giant sinkhole your backdoor fell intoIn 1993 the US president Bill Clinton’s administration introduced the “Clipper chip” into America’s digital and consumer electronics. It was one of the earliest attempts to enforce a backdoor into digital products, and the first in what is known as the cryptowars, when the US government fought to control and regulate strong encryption.The Clipper chip was a catastrophic failure. It’s a failure the attorney general, George Brandis, may find instructive, as he places Australia on the frontline of a new cryptowar. Continue reading...

Titles that inhabit close versions of our physical reality too often shy away from grappling with difficult political truthsIn the beginning, video game settings were predominantly fantastical, usually galactic: the technical and financial cost of rendering a scene on a computer screen made space, with that affordable blackness, the ideal locale. Thus 1962’s Spacewar!, 1979’s Galaxian and 1984’s Elite were all games whose settings were defined as much by those boundaries as authorial intent. Those limitations are now gone, freeing game-makers to set their sights on closer, more detailed locales: Los Santos, Grand Theft Auto V’s gently fictionalised Los Angeles, Watch Dogs 2’s Silicon Valley-skewering version of San Francisco and, in the forthcoming Far Cry 5, a dramatised version of rural Montana.Shifting the shoot-them-before-they-shoot-you-first principle established by Space Invaders et al to contemporary settings represents more than an aesthetic manoeuvre: it inevitably adds a political dimension to what was, once, a mere test of reactions, the sort you might find at a funfair. Mostly, game-makers don’t take overt political sides in their games, which, so the wisdom goes, must appeal to players of all political alignments and degrees of engagement. Many people use entertainment as escapism; they want to focus solely on the thrill and challenge of firing a digital weapon, not ponder the implications of who is aiming it at whom. Continue reading...

The new Kia Niro won’t throw you to the lions, it’s far too busy saving the planet and making sure you feel comfortablePrice: £22,795

Guidelines about having sex with employees paints picture of sexism at under-fire company that comes directly from CEO Travis KalanickA leaked memo sent by Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick set guidelines for 400 staff on when it was and wasn’t acceptable to have sex at a company event in Miami in 2013.

The tech giant’s inaugural TV offering, which sees a panel of celebrities judge the merits of new cellphone apps, manages to be both boring and self-indulgentPlanet of the Apps, the first original series by Apple and a curious choice to lead the rollout of the company’s evergreen content, won’t be a fun watch for anyone – except maybe venture capitalists and those subscribed to Goop.The unscripted competition show, which follows enterprising hopefuls as they pitch new, often remarkably boring ideas for phone applications to a panel of celebrity judges, is a bit like Dragon’s Den or Shark Tank meets The Voice, although I don’t imagine it’ll attract the devoted followings of either. Continue reading...

From sexual harassment claims to acquiring a rape victim’s medical records, Uber’s reputation goes from bad to worse - but with little effect on its bottom lineThere’s a pattern that’s becoming clear: a news story breaks revealing Uber to have been engaged in illegal, unethical, or just downright gross behaviour. Uber half-heartedly swears it’s an exception, or it’s in the past, or that actually it is the law that is wrong anyway. Everyone expresses outrage, arguing that this is surely the story which will spell the end of Uber by causing its customers/investors/employees to abandon it in droves. And Uber continues to grow, and cement itself further in the lives of millions of customers.You could see that this spring, when Uber leapt headfirst into a sexual harassment scandal from which it is still attempting to extract itself. First one employee, then a trickle, then a flood, came forward with allegations that the company’s working environment was hostile to women, and that HR simply didn’t care. Continue reading...