Technology | The Guardian

Damore became an ‘alt-right’ hero after Google fired him over his views on women. Did Google-owned YouTube play a role in reinforcing those ideas?

Quick, calm and clever, the Mercedes E-Class offers the perfect front-row seat to follow the Tour de France

If your working day is being ruined by distractions or admin errors, try these apps to improve your focus, time management and output Continue reading...

Losses are steep and user growth is anaemic leaving investors fearful the latest ‘new Facebook’ has run out of steamIs Snapchat – the social media app famous for its disappearing messages – in danger of doing a vanishing act of its own? It’s a question some are asking after investors turned on the company again this week following a second set of poor results which have turned a once-hot tech company into a stock market casualty.The losses alone were steep. Snapchat’s parent, Snap Inc, lost $443m over the last three months, compared with $116m in the same period a year ago. Young tech companies are expected to burn through cash at a prodigious rate as they chase customers, but the main worry for shareholders was anaemic user growth, missed revenue targets and the threat from Facebook and Google – both of which have copied some of Snapchat’s key features. Imitation may well be the most sincere form of flattery, but in this case it could also be the most deadly. Continue reading...

The IOC is against it, but competitive video gaming draws huge young audiences and deserves the same platform as other Olympic eventsThe image of an Olympian is associated with physical prowess, a sculpted body chipped into perfection by years of careful maintenance and preparation. We expect these people to perform great feats of physicality better than the rest of us. That is why so many are scornful of the notion that competitive video gaming, or eSports as it’s come to be known, should stand alongside other Olympic sports. But this requires rethinking.Related: eSports could be medal event at 2024 Olympics, Paris bid team says Continue reading...

The wage gap is more than simply one very memorable statistic – it’s a measure of inequality that shrinks and expands according to age, industry and raceA Google employee’s tirade against diversity efforts included a claim that the gender wage gap is a myth, in spite of mountains of data proving otherwise.But the wage gap is more than simply one very memorable statistic – that a woman in the US earns $0.80 for each $1 a man earns. It is a measure of inequality that shrinks and expands based on variables including age, geography, industry, occupation and race.

The 23-year-old has fallen from grace as he battles accusations of involvement in a malware scam, but the cyber community has protested his innocenceWhen Marcus Hutchins appears in court in Milwaukee on Monday, it will be almost three months to the day since the young British cybersecurity researcher halted the spread of a malicious software that crippled Britain’s National Health Service as well as companies such as FedEx and Telefonica.In the days that followed, Hutchins was hailed as an “accidental hero” for his discovery of the “kill switch” that stopped the WannaCry ransomware and worked with GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) to mitigate the threat. Continue reading...

Apparently ‘surprised’ by release of documents, TV network attempts to push back ransom deadline with promise of paymentHBO reportedly offered $250,000 (£193,000) to the group that hacked its servers under the guise of a “bug bounty”, according to a screenshot of the conversation released by the attackers and seen by the Guardian.A senior vice president of the company made the offer on 27 July, phrasing the payment as a reward for discovering weaknesses in HBO’s network rather than acceding to ransom demands. Continue reading...

World’s largest retailer sees US market as ripe for the taking, following consumer dislike for fees and sports teams desire to boost merchandise salesAmazon’s next big thing is reportedly to be ticket sales, as the retail giant looks to take on the dominance of Ticketmaster, partnering with venue owners in the US.According to four sources talking to Reuters, Amazon see the lucrative US ticketing market as ripe for attack. Consumers dislike ticket fees, and venue owners, sports leagues and teams want more distributors for their tickets as they seek to boost sales. Continue reading...

News of heavy losses at Snapchat’s parent company, Snap Inc, saw shares plummeting by more than 16%Dancing hot dogs were not enough to save Snapchat from another Wall Street pounding on Thursday. Losses at Snapchat’s parent company have nearly quadrupled in the last three months, the company announced, sending the social media company’s shares to a new low in after hours trading.Snap Inc lost $443m in the second quarter. The company paid out $242m in stock based payments and associated taxes over the quarter. The mobile app’s revenues rose 153% to $182m, but were below Wall Street forecasts. The company also failed to match expectations for growth, adding 7.3 million new users over the quarter, below the 8 million expected by analysts. Snapchat had 173 million daily active users over the quarter. Continue reading...

Online retailer’s UK warehouse and logistics operation more than halved its corporation tax bill from £15.8m to £7.4mAmazon paid just €16.5m (£15m) in tax on European revenues of €21.6bn (£19.5bn) reported through Luxembourg in 2016.The figures, published in Amazon’s latest annual accounts for its European online retail business, are likely to reignite the debate about US tech companies using complex crossborder arrangements to minimise the tax they pay across the continent. Continue reading...

Female programmers made up half the industry’s workforce in the beginning, says Peter Kay; while Dr Jill Miller says increasing diversity is about levelling the playing field. Plus Robert Lawrence and Susan Hutchinson on data and the state

HomePod software suggests device’s facial-recognition system will work when phone is flat and be able to mute notifications when it detects user is lookingMore details have been revealed about the highly anticipated iPhone 8 by software leaks from Apple, including the device’s ability to mute notifications when it detects you are looking at it.While the name and precise release date of the next big change to the Apple’s iPhone, dubbed the D22 iPhone, is unknown the leaked software for Apple’s upcoming HomePod smart speaker has already revealed what the phone will look like, that it will have face recognition and other details. Continue reading...

Marigold has a broken iPod and would like to hear about alternative MP3 players, mainly for listening to podcasts and Audible audio booksI was appalled to read that Apple is abandoning iPods. I have a seventh-generation iPod that has just packed it in, but I hesitate to spend money on repairs if it is about to go obsolete. Meanwhile, I am happily using my 2008 model, which lacks a radio but is fine otherwise. The grandson declares that this is the moment to get a “proper” phone that will do everything, but I am refusing to submit to blackmail and have no wish to consult the internet at every opportunity.I am addicted to podcasts and books from Audible, and don’t often play music. Would an MP3 player from another maker still tie up with iTunes and Audible? Could I get one with a radio, preferably DAB? MarigoldApple is abandoning its traditional iPods because most people with smartphones now use them for everything. However, many current smartphones – including Apple’s – don’t have FM, and none has a DAB radio.

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

We’ve often been told that screen time for children should be limited. But what if the real danger is our own addiction to our phones?

An article in the Atlantic has found some alarming results linking depression and technology. My research with Australian teens paints a different picture

The new feature, Watch, lets users discover videos from outside their feed more easily, and will also dabble in original contentFacebook has revamped its video offering, creating a new, TV-like rival to YouTube and dabbling in original content in a bid to get people to spend even more time on the social network.The Facebook feature, dubbed Watch, will let users discover videos from outside of their feed more easily, create watchlists, and have an easier way to follow shows created by artists, brands and publishers.

Computer engineer James Damore, axed for suggesting women were less suited to certain tech roles, may challenge dismissalThe computer engineer fired by Google for suggesting women are less suited to certain roles in tech and leadership is considering taking legal action against the company.Related: Segregated Valley: the ugly truth about Google and diversity in tech Continue reading...

Virginia residents and tech blogs alike fooled by university ‘research project’ featuring a driver pretending to be part of autonomous vehicleTech blogs went crazy over the weekend after a new self-driving car was seen rolling around Arlington, Virginia.Unlike vehicles from Google Waymo, Uber and others, the car didn’t have any obvious signs of a Lidar array, the chunky imaging technology most autonomous vehicles use to gauge the state of the road ahead. Instead, it had just a small bar mounted on the dashboard, which blinked red when it was at a stop light and green once the cost was clear. Continue reading...

Government proposes penalties as ‘last resort’ for those failing to adequately assess risks and prevent damageBritish organisations could face fines of up to £17m, or 4% of global turnover, if they fail to take measures to prevent cyber-attacks that could result in major disruption to services such as transport, health or electricity networks.But the proposals, which are being considered as part of a government consultation launched on Tuesday, say that financial penalties will be used as a “last resort” and not applied if organisations facing an attack can prove they assessed the risks adequately. Continue reading...

Mayor of London says ‘lives could depend on’ removal of videos that instruct viewers how to kill rival gang members, which YouTube says breached no rulesLondon mayor Sadiq Khan has criticised Google’s YouTube after it failed to take down four violent gang videos describing killing methods and threatening rivals, which were flagged by police.The videos reportedly show gang members waving a large Rambo-style knife as they attempt to goad rivals. The videos have been watched more than 356,000 times and have not been removed despite YouTube’s terms saying it takes “threats, harassment, intimidation (and) inciting others to commit violent acts” seriously. Continue reading...

Are the idealists ‘good guys’ who are challenging the old order or are they really tax-minimising corporations that threaten our future?Antonio García Martínez has seen the future and it is terrifying. Which is why he is going to set up home (“this is the drone room right here”) on a small island north of Seattle and live out the ravages of post-America, self-sufficiently, with a composting toilet and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. He is nervy and fast-talking, like a survivor who has seen unimaginably horrific things. And he has – he was once a product manager at Facebook. There is going to be a “violent revolt”, he says. The tech overlords, he mentions in passing, are all building their own survivalist camps. The rest of us, the “normals”, are sleepwalking towards the apocalypse, posting Instagram pictures from our most recent Airbnb stay from the back of a self-driving Uber. The first of two episodes of Secrets of Silicon Valley (BBC2, Sunday) was a sobering look at how tech is going to change society quickly and dramatically.The Industrial Revolution was nothing compared to what is coming, says one tech genius, Jeremy Howard, whose artificial intelligence (AI) software will probably replace doctors any day. He arrives on screen on a one-wheeled skateboard – why have four wheels if you can have one? It seems a neat symbol of how redundant most of us will become. Continue reading...

Earth’s metals and minerals, essential to our technology, are running out. We need to explore long-forgotten passages in flooded minesIndium, rhodium, platinum, tellurium and gold: these are some of the rarest elements in the world. From smartphones (which contain a whopping 60 to 64 elements) to hybrid cars, wind turbines and medical equipment, much of the technology we depend upon contains a rich list of elemental ingredients.Meanwhile, demand for traditional metals such as copper and aluminium is rocketing, driven by the rapid growth of emerging economies in Asia and South America. Continue reading...

The band from the game League of Legends has stormed the charts and bagged cameos from the likes of Tommy Lee – despite existing only in the imaginations of their creatorsHow has a band that doesn’t physically exist, with zero promotion from the music industry, breach the Billboard Top 40 and reach No 1 in the iTunes metal chart?Conceived by California-based gaming gurus Riot Games in 2014, Pentakill exist purely in the imaginations of their creators – and the 100 million global fans of League of Legends, the multiplayer online battle arena game that spawned the band’s members, Karthus the Deathsinger, Yorick, Sona, Olaf and lead guitarist Mordekaiser the Master of Metal. Continue reading...

Smartphones take centre-stage is this hideously dumbed-down offeringThis is what happens when a film studio decides not to bother with making films good enough to prise the audience from their smartphones and just embraces the fact that mobile devices are part of the movie-viewing experience for a swath of the younger audience. And it’s horrible. A bleak, witless, creative wasteland of a movie that plays out like Pixar’s Inside Out dumbed down for morons. I don’t think I’m overstating things here when I say that The Emoji Movie feels like a harbinger for the end of human civilisation as we know it. A strident palette of candy-coloured empty calories and poop jokes and a cynical message about accepting yourself had me searching for an emoji showing a dispirited film critic hanging from a noose fashioned from a phone-charger cable. Continue reading...

Tech firms have developed AI that can learn how to write music. So will machines soon be composing symphonies, hit singles and bespoke soundtracks?From Elgar to Adele, and the Beatles or Pink Floyd to Kanye West, London’s Abbey Road Studios has hosted a storied list of musical stars since opening in 1931. But the man playing a melody on the piano in the complex’s Gatehouse studio when the Observer visits isn’t one of them.The man sitting at the keyboard where John Lennon may have finessed A Day in the Life is Siavash Mahdavi, CEO of AI Music, a British tech startup exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence and music. Continue reading...

Volvo has given its all-conquering saloon the beefcake treatment. But brawn is never a match for brainsPrice: £41,955

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...

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 laws”. 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 ads”. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Monday. 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 numbers”, 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 management”. 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...

Call it Morris dancing, but this new Chinese-owned MG will need to be a lot lighter on its feet if it’s to win over the British motorist

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 walking”.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...