Apple’s iconic MP3 player has officially been discontinued, rendered obsolete. In the age of streaming, it’s a wonder it’s survived this long

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...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Wednesday. 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 “limited”.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 releases”, Microsoft put out a blogpost in response to the anguished outcry at the potential removal of an old friend. Continue reading...

As MS Paint prepares to shuffle off this mortal coil, we want your memories and shaky artworks created via this venerable graphics editing program

Developer booed on stage as gamers left unable to connect to play popular augmented reality game after mobile networks and servers overloadedThe first ever, official Pokémon Go Fest collapsed into chaos on Saturday, after attendees who had queued for hours for the chance to catch Legendary Pokémon Lugia found the game almost unplayable due to overloaded mobile phone networks.Developer Niantic has apologised to fans, offering a full refund on the $20 ticket, $100 worth of in-game Pokécoins, and giving a Lugia to all registered attendees, but the event still casts a shadow over what was supposed to be a very public celebration of the game’s first anniversary. 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...

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

The unceasing evolution of the 5-Series has resulted in a BMW of almost heroic ability. But it can’t do everything…Price: £36,025

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 for”. Continue reading...

Google denies claim as US official describes ‘chilling effect’, saying employees have expressed fear company’s strict policy prevents them from speaking outThe US Department of Labor has raised concerns that Google’s strict confidentiality agreements have discouraged employees from speaking to the government about discrimination as part of a high-profile wage inequality investigation.Following a judge’s ruling that Google must hand over salary records and employee contact information to federal regulators investigating possible systemic pay disparities, a labor department official said the agency was worried that the technology corporation’s restrictive employee communication policies could impede the next phase of the inquiry. Continue reading...

In Beauty and the Books, we chat to those who love both books and beauty products. Here, game developer Ally McLean reveals her fondness for green-tea scrub and Douglas AdamsShe’s the creator of Eve Beauregard, her cosplay alter ego with more than 300,000 Facebook followers and the basis for the character of Yennefer of Vengerberg character in Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt. Ally McLean is also the project lead at independent gaming studio Robot House and is launching a mentor program with the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association(IGEA) for women who want to work in the gaming industry. Here, she discusses the delights of indulgent skincare and why a copy of Amy Poehler’s book Yes Please is always nearby. Continue reading...

Whetstone, who left Uber following corporate scandals and has worked for leading Conservative politicians in the UK, will become communications VPRachel Whetstone, the former top public relations executive at Uber, is joining Facebook as vice-president of communications for Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.Whetstone, a British public relations guru who worked for some of the UK’s most powerful Conservative politicians, stepped down as head of public policy and communications at Uber in April following a string of corporate scandals. Before Uber, Whetstone worked at Google as the head of communications and public policy. Continue reading...

Playstation, Xbox and the rest have a vital role in helping under-represented people form a sense of themselves. But is the industry doing enough?When Katie Stone Perez’s daughter first tried to ride a two-wheel bicycle, the little girl took her Super Mario plush toy and put him in the basket on the front of the handle bars. Intrigued, Katie asked why it was important that Nintendo’s iconic plumber accompanied her on the ride. “Because he taught me to never give up,” her daughter said.Perez knows a thing or two about the power of video games as a reflective, empowering and emotional influence in the lives of players. While working as the senior program manager for Microsoft’s ID@Xbox program, which seeks to support independent development on the console, she worked closely with Kenny Roy, creator of forthcoming puzzle platformer I, Hope. Aimed at children affected by cancer, it’s the story of a girl who must help defend her island home against a mysterious sickness. Perez also supported the launch of We Love Chicago, a narrative game about multiracial communities living in the city’s urban areas, and right now, she’s helping out at the Xbox-sponsored Girls Make Games, a three-week summer camp dedicated to teaching young women how to code and create video games. “Diversity within the games industry is incredibly important to me,” she says. “I think we need to back away from this focus on one type of consumer or one type of developer - some of my favourite gaming experiences come from really diverse creators.” Continue reading...

Machine built to keep humans in check defeated by stairs and fountain in incident where ‘no one was harmed’The machine uprising has been dealt a serious blow after a robot cop was found face down in a fountain.Built to autonomously patrol offices and shopping malls, the Knightscope K5 security robot is meant to be able to navigate environments and keep unruly humans in check. Instead, after being deployed to a Washington DC office block, it was found drowned in a watery grave. Much like a Dalek, it appears to have been defeated by stairs. Continue reading...

John Nussey and wife, Avril O’Neill, were inspired to create smart doorbell Ding after working on prototypes for other entrepreneursThere are few things more infuriating than arriving home to a “Sorry we missed you”card after waiting hours for a delivery. A report last year from IMRG estimated that failed deliveries are costing retailers up to £780m, not to mention the frustration and inconvenience for customers who happen to be in the shower or out when the doorbell rings.It’s a problem that the co-founder of Ding, John Nussey, was inspired to do something about. He and his wife, Avril O’Neill, have run their own business for 10 years, making product prototypes for other entrepreneurs, and began to develop their own list of ideas: “Simple, everyday things that had been forgotten about,” Nussey says. The doorbell was at the top of that list. The idea was to “make products that don’t forget the job they’re supposed to do [but] that use technology to be better”. Continue reading...

Sites could reportedly be blocked for failing to follow government rules forcing users to provide credit card details as verificationPrivacy and free speech campaigners have criticised the government’s plans to force pornography websites to use age checks or face being blocked.Websites flouting the new rules, which are part of the Digital Economy Act, could reportedly find that a regulator has told internet service providers to prevent access to them. Those who provide payment and other services to such sites could also be asked to impose restrictions. Continue reading...

Last week Alex Hern advised how to arrange apps on your home screen. But not everybody agreed – and here are their alternatives

An old-school shooter offers demanding delights, a cycling game is a bit flat, while a retro racer can’t recapture the magicPC, PS4, Housemarque, cert: 12

Judge rules tech giant must give US federal department snapshot of its 2014 pay records as part of pay discrimination caseA judge has ordered Google to hand over salary records to the government in an ongoing investigation by the US Department of Labor, which has accused the technology corporation of systematically discriminating against women.Google must provide the federal government with a 2014 snapshot of the data, along with contact information for thousands of employees for possible interviews, according to a ruling made public on Sunday. Continue reading...

Mercedes-Benz is having its best ever year – and leading the charge is the imperious new E-ClassKevin Ashton didn’t take the usual route into computing. The man who coined the term “the internet of things” actually studied Scandinavian literature at the University of London. He now lives in Austin, Texas, and is one of the foremost thinkers on exactly where the internet is taking us and how it will impact on our everyday lives. In a recent interview he envisioned that in “25 years we’ll be able to live in Edinburgh and commute in our self-driving cars to London via a trunk road designed especially for the purpose, at speeds of up to 250mph.” Well, maybe… but one thing is for sure: I’ll still be stopping for a bowl of delicious home-made soup at Tebay services in the Lakes.If Kevin’s vision comes true, chances are that Mercedes will be making many of the cars we’ll be driving, I mean, that we’ll be driven in. In terms of sales, the maker has just had its most successful ever first half year (1,144,274 units sold) and most successful ever June (209,309 cars delivered). Sales are up 35% in China and 47% in South Korea. The German builder uses terms like “private retreat” and “digital living space” to describe today’s cars and its prototype luxury sedans. Continue reading...

It is one of the fastest-growing social networks, but are you making the most of its photo and video features? Get some handy hintsWhen Instagram was launched in October 2010, it was an app for applying stylish “filters” to your photos and sharing them with friends. Six and a half years (and a $1bn acquisition by Facebook) on, it has 700m active users and a host of advanced features.It’s still simple to share a photo – or a video now – with a few taps. However, if you talk to some of the people who have tens or even hundreds of thousands of followers on the service, you’ll realise there’s a lot to learn about mastering it. Continue reading...

Turning down a $3bn offer made Snapchat famous for its bold vision. But now Facebook is catching up, leading some to predict a ‘long and painful death’

Solar-powered vehicles are here – but are they really the answer?Our solar panels occupy only a third of our roof area. Even so, on a summer day they produce about the same power our Volkswagen electric car draws as it charges from a plug in the garage.So, to the extent that we top up during the day, we are literally driving on sunshine: nil use of resources, nil pollution, and, in the context of your article (Battery cars may eat up more than Hinkley Point’s capacity by 2030, 13 July), nil load on national power generation infrastructure. Going for a drive in serene, effortless near-silence, knowing that it hasn’t cost anybody anything, is quite simply wonderful. Continue reading...

Leaning back into a pedestal to try to get the perfect angle took out a whole row of sculptures at an LA gallery – at least that’s the way it looksA woman in Los Angeles has apparently demonstrated just how damaging selfies can be by destroying whole row of pieces of art while trying to get that perfect image.The moment, captured on video at the 14th Factory exhibition space in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles shows a woman apparently bending down to try to get the perfect angle for a selfie shot down a row of the Hypercaine exhibition by Hong Kong-based artist Simon Birch and a series of international collaborators. Continue reading...

After years of fiddling, I finally cracked it. This is how you should organise your home screen – and it’s advice that could be handy for Android users tooIn the 10 years since the iPhone launched, I’ve never really settled on a way to arrange my home screen that I actually like. Folders seem clunky but no folders leaves me with too many things multiple swipes away. Organising by what I use most leaves me with the rarely but rapidly needed apps buried, while organising by speed of access leaves me tapping through multiple times a day.And then there’s aesthetics. Some apps simply don’t deserve to be on my first home screen no matter how much I use them. Mostly games. Game designers can’t make an attractive icon for the life of them, it seems. Continue reading...

Under government plan, internet companies would be obliged to give law enforcement agencies warranted accessThe Australian government has proposed a new cybersecurity law to force global technology companies such as Facebook and Google to give law enforcement agencies access to encrypted messages sent by suspected extremists and criminals.Malcolm Turnbull said on Friday the law would be modelled on Britain’s Investigatory Powers Act, passed in November, which gave intelligence agencies some of the most extensive surveillance powers in the western world. Continue reading...

Many readers are still using Vista despite it no longer receiving security patches, but it should still possible for them to upgrade to Windows 7 and Windows 10My Windows Vista PC works perfectly well, and I have Kaspersky Internet Security. I have been told that I will need a new PC as I could get viruses now that Microsoft no longer supports Vista. A new PC to replace the one I have would cost about £1,200 and it seems a shame when I have no problems with it, but I am concerned that it could be hacked. ksallatt Continue reading...

From celebrities to exes, we’ve always obsessed over people that intrigue us. Social media just makes that easier – but there’s still a line you can crossI follow my ex-boyfriend across four different platforms and know the name of his new girlfriend’s sister. Is this stalking?You ask a version of the two primary questions pertaining to behavior online: am I being gross? Or, more commonly, is someone being gross to me? The answer in both cases is usually yes, since the internet, if it has done anything, has liberated our grossest instincts, and I salute your attempt to police yours. Continue reading...

A tremendously intelligent and stylish book on the ‘colonisation of everyday life by information processing’ calls for resistance to rule by the tech elite

Stroud high school for girls says tech gadgets and social media exacerbate pressures leading to low self-esteemA girls’ school is banning wearable activity trackers and smartwatches because of concerns that pupils are skipping lunch if they fail to meet their calorie and exercise targets.Teachers at Stroud high school in Gloucestershire fear the gadgets are exacerbating some girls’ worries about their body image. Continue reading...

After forcing users to switch to separate Messenger app to continue chatting, Facebook will now push adverts on them in expanded trialAfter forcing Facebook users to switch to a separate Messenger app to continue chatting, the social network is about to start pushing adverts on those using the function.Facebook said on Tuesday that it was testing advertising on its Messenger app globally as the world’s largest social media company looks to further monetise its popular chat service, which has 1.2 billion monthly users. Continue reading...