Hospitals slowly returning to normal after ransomware attack led to cancelled operations and diverted ambulancesNHS trusts are experiencing disruption one week after a cyber-attack caused havoc in more than 150 countries.The unprecedented ransomware breach froze computers across the health service last Friday, with hackers threatening to delete files unless a ransom was paid. Continue reading...
by Leigh Alexander, Elena Cresci and Iain Chambers on (#2Q1BX)
Dr Steve Carter, chief scientist at eHarmony, talks about the company’s use of algorithms and memes to make real-world dating more successfulThere’s no shortage of articles about how apps are eroding intimacy and leading us all to a seedy buffet of soulless right-swipes. But what about ways emerging tech is actually trying to make it easier for us to find the person out there who’s right for us? Can you reliably have a first date with someone based on the fact that they like the same memes as you?
Not every game can be a classic. Keith Stuart remembers the not-very-well-remembered titles of his youthWhen I was ten years old, most of the computer games I played on my Commodore 64 were not very good. They weren’t the classics we all remember; they mostly weren’t Impossible Mission or Way of the Exploding Fist (though I did play those too, I wasn’t a barbarian).Every week my mum would take me to Wythenshawe library in South Manchester where you could rent games for 10p each. The best ones were constantly unavailable, so I’d grab what I could – weird titles no one else wanted. Continue reading...
Former head of Uber’s self-driving car project Anthony Levandowski was warned that his employment would be terminated if he did not comply with caseUber has threatened to fire Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer at the centre of Uber’s court case with Alphabet’s Waymo, accused of stealing self-driving car trade secrets.Waymo sued Uber alleging that Levandowski, one of the former engineers key to the development of Google’s self-driving cars, downloaded more than 14,000 confidential documents before leaving Waymo to start self-driving truck firm Otto, which was subsequently bought by Uber. Continue reading...
The hype for Snake, T9 texts and sleek design has turned the 3310’s relaunch into an event. But 2G connectivity and a rubbish camera bring you back to earthThe darling of Mobile World Congress and retro tech fans is finally here, but does the new Nokia 3310 live up the hype? Is it everything your rose-tinted view of the year 2000 is crying out for?
Bungie gave its first glimpse of the second-entry in its billion-dollar franchise, and fans may finally find something to make up for the loss of their old stuffHalo developer Bungie has lifted the lid on Destiny 2, revealing the first details about its follow-up to the 2014 massively multiplayer online first-person shooter.As the first true sequel to Destiny, following three years of expansion packs and content patches, Destiny 2 provided a chance to start over for the developer: existing players will lose their weapons, armour and other assorted collectibles. The game’s storyline sees the players’ Guardians – the last defenders of humanity in Destiny’s far-future setting – similarly stripped of their powers through an all-out assault on space-god the Traveller. Continue reading...
Federal Communications Commission will start formal process of repealing Obama-era rule that banned internet service providers from creating fast lanesDonald Trump’s newly installed media and telecoms regulator moved to repeal Obama-era rules aimed at protecting an open internet on Thursday, the most serious move to date in what looks set to be a hard fight over the future of the internet.The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), led by chairman Ajit Pai, voted two to one to start the formal process of dismantling “net neutrality†rules put in place in 2015. Continue reading...
Latest fine shows tech giants increasingly seen as destructive and obstructive, whether on tax, privacy or competition lawFacebook’s €110m fine by the European commission for providing misleading information about data-sharing between Facebook and WhatsApp is just one of a growing number of regulatory battles the US social media giant is fighting.Related: Facebook fined £94m for 'misleading' EU over WhatsApp takeover Continue reading...
Mike is a happy Windows smartphone user and wants to upgrade to the latest operating system. Is this wise, or is the phone going the way of the BlackBerry?I’ve been using a Microsoft Lumia 640 for the past couple of years and like it a lot. It works well with OneDrive and other Microsoft stuff, and was excellent value too! Looking to upgrade to Windows 10 Mobile, I see there is no longer much choice of phones. I fancy the Lumia 650 and could splash out on a 950, but is this wise?I had an Android phone before that, which gradually ground to a halt, and my daughter uses iPhones, but they aren’t for me. I’m happy with Windows phones, but what’s happening with them? Will they go the way of BlackBerry? Mike Continue reading...
Games such as Wii Sports Boxing made players feel like they were in a drunken pub fight, but Nintendo wants to revive the format’s fortunesMotion controls. Punching. Nintendo. For many, these four words will summon the spectre of Wii Sports Boxing with its wildly flailing limbs and drunken pub fight responsiveness. When the company’s new fighting game for the Nintendo Switch, Arms, was announced back in January, there were concerns we’d be subjected to more of the aimless waggling that Boxing – and many other Wii games – fell victim to. After a few hours with a preview version however, this is less of a concern – although Arms remains a difficult game to grasp.The design theory seems to be to do to fighting games what Splatoon did to shooters – ie take a popular genre, strip it down to the basics and build it back up in an idiosyncratic style, making it accessible to newcomers while also promising enough depth to keep a lively online scene thriving. It is a fighting game with party game elements – it’s Super Smash Brothers v Punch Out v Powerstone. And that’s a really intriguing if complicated package. Continue reading...
With Google Assistant coming to the iPhone, the company hopes to kill off Siri and wants to ‘see’ inside your home as it reiterates its AI-first approachThere were whoops and cheers from developers as Google announced the incremental ways it is strengthening its grip on many aspects of people’s lives at its annual developer conference, Google I/O.
by Julia Carrie Wong in Fremont, California on (#2PWKX)
Exclusive: CEO Elon Musk defends workplace, saying ‘[we are not] just greedy capitalists who skimp on safety’ – and declares his $50bn company overvaluedWhen Tesla bought a decommissioned car factory in Fremont, California, Elon Musk transformed the old-fashioned, unionized plant into a much-vaunted “factory of the futureâ€, where giant robots named after X-Men shape and fold sheets of metal inside a gleaming white mecca of advanced manufacturing.The appetite for Musk’s electric cars, and his promise to disrupt the carbon-reliant automobile industry, has helped Tesla’s value exceed that of both Ford and, briefly, General Motors (GM). But some of the human workers who share the factory with their robotic counterparts complain of grueling pressure – which they attribute to Musk’s aggressive production goals – and sometimes life-changing injuries. Continue reading...
AFL club’s acquisition of the eSports team forges new links between traditional and online sportsAFL club Adelaide Crows has dipped its toes into the world of competitive video gaming, acquiring a professional eSports team, Legacy, in the first deal of its kind in Australia.Legacy, who are based in Sydney, are one of the eight top-tier League of Legends (LoL) teams in the Oceanic Pro League (OPL), which launched in the region in 2015. Continue reading...
Hackers hoped Disney would pay up when they threatened to leak Dead Men Tell No Tales online – but have they scuppered the wrong vessel?Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, due out on 26 May, was only 10 days from release when hackers stole a copy from a post-production company in LA.They demanded a ransom, believed to be $80,000 (£61,700) – peanuts for a franchise that has pulled in $3bn globally. They threatened that, if the ransom wasn’t paid, they would release the film to torrent sites in chunks, carved up like shark bait. Continue reading...
Amazon hopes its low-cost, feature-rich Fire 7 and HD 8 tablets continue to buck market trend thanks to improved battery life, screen and storageAmazon has launched two new budget Fire tablets, with one costing just £50, and has brought its Alexa voice assistant to tablets in the UK.The new thinner and lighter £50 Fire 7, which has an improved screen, longer battery life and more storage, hopes to continue the success of the previous Fire 7 tablet, which won plaudits for balancing low cost with features. At the same time, Amazon has launched a new version of its Fire HD 8 tablet, with similar improvements and a lower starting price of £80. Continue reading...
Group linked to NSA cyberwarfare tools used in ransomware attack threatens to set up ‘wine of the month’-style serviceThe hacking group that says data they released facilitated the WannaCry ransomware attack has threatened to leak a new wave of hacking tools they claim to have stolen from the US National Security Agency.The so-called Shadow Brokers, who claimed responsibility for releasing NSA tools that were used to spread the WannaCry ransomware through the NHS and across the world, said they have a new suite of tools and vulnerabilities in newer software. The possible targets include Microsoft’s Windows 10, which was unaffected by the initial attack and is on at least 500m devices around the world. Continue reading...
Developer Impulse Gear has made an earnest attempt at a VR version of Halo, but the game, and its strange PlayStation Aim Controller, fall short of the targetWhen the GunCon, a plastic replica pistol for the PlayStation console, first launched in December 1995, it came in just one colour: jet black. Viewed from any distance, the only giveaway that this was a video game controller, rather than an authentic firearm, was the claret-coloured start button on the side of a barrel. Pull a GunCon from a rucksack on a crowded subway and you’d almost certainly cause a terror stampede. When the devices launched in the UK, the law demanded they were recoloured bright blue and red.There’s no risk of any potentially deadly confusion when it comes the PlayStation Aim Controller, which launches this week alongside Farpoint, a futuristic shooting game built for virtual reality. It’s an impressionistic sketch of a firearm, built from the kind of white tubing you might find under a kitchen sink, with a glowing ping-pong ball fixed to the end of the barrel. If the purpose of peripherals like this aim to narrow the gulf of abstraction that separates activity in a video game from its real-world counterpart (the plastic driving wheel that makes it feel more like you’re driving a Ferrari in Forza, for example, or the wooden gear lever that approximates the Shinkansen’s dashboard in Densha de Go) then this effort seems laughably off-target. Continue reading...
GMB says it will seek judicial review if Transport for London does not guarantee more rights for driversUber has come under further pressure in London after a union threatened legal action if the capital’s transport authority renews the taxi app’s licence without guaranteeing more rights for drivers.In a legal letter sent this week, the GMB union warns Transport for London (TfL) that failure to impose conditions which guarantee income for Uber drivers while limiting their number in the city and the hours they can work would “breach the relevant standards of reasonableness and would accordingly be unlawfulâ€. Continue reading...
Companies see share prices rise sharply amid expected increase in spending on IT security after WannaCry hackThe ransomware attack that disrupted the NHS and businesses around the world has led to a boom in share prices of cybersecurity companies – including the firm used by the health service to protect it against hackers.With governments and companies expected to increase spending on IT security after being caught out by the attack, cybersecurity firms have seen their stock market values climb sharply over the past two days. Continue reading...
French regulator hits firm with maximum fine, while Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Spain continue investigationsFacebook has been fined €150,000 (£129,000) by France’s data protection watchdog and is being investigated by Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain for data privacy violations around the tracking of users and non-users and the use of user data for advertising.The data regulators clubbed together to form a so-called contact group to analyse the changes Facebook made to its privacy policy in 2014. The French watchdog CNIL hit Facebook with the maximum fine possible at the point at which it started its investigation in 2014. As of October last year CNIL can now issue fines of up to €3m. Continue reading...
National data guardian says patient data transfer from Royal Free to Google subsidiary has ‘inappropriate legal basis’ as information not used for direct careThe transfer of 1.6m patient records to Google’s artificial intelligence company DeepMind Health has been criticised for its “inappropriate legal basis†by the UK’s national data guardian.In a letter leaked to Sky News, the national data guardian, Dame Fiona Caldicott, warned DeepMind’s partner hospital, the Royal Free, that the patient record transfer was not for “direct care†since the data was initially used to test the app that the two organisations were working on, before patients were treated with it. Continue reading...
Following pressure from users, the social network introduced tools to stem the spread of false information. But the rollout has been rocky at bestWhen Facebook’s new fact-checking system labeled a Newport Buzz article as possible “fake newsâ€, warning users against sharing it, something unexpected happened. Traffic to the story skyrocketed, according to Christian Winthrop, editor of the local Rhode Island website.“A bunch of conservative groups grabbed this and said, ‘Hey, they are trying to silence this blog – share, share share,’†said Winthrop, who published the story that falsely claimed hundreds of thousands of Irish people were brought to the US as slaves. “With Facebook trying to throttle it and say, ‘Don’t share it,’ it actually had the opposite effect.†Continue reading...
Marcus Hutchins works from home for an LA-based web security company but has been a tech blogger since leaving schoolThe “accidental hero†who halted the global spread of the international ransomware attack is a self-trained 22-year-old from south-west England who skipped university and got hired by a California web security company thanks to his tech blog.Marcus Hutchins found and inadvertently activated a “kill switch†in the malicious software that wreaked havoc on organisations including the UK’s National Health Service on Friday, by registering a specific domain name hidden within the program for just $10.69 (£8.30). Continue reading...
Could the government or intelligence agencies have done more to protect the health service from cybercriminals?Three days after the WannaCry ransomware outbreak, a string of questions have emerged. Could the US and UK intelligence agencies – the NSA and GCHQ – have done more to prevent the attack? And, in the UK, must the NHS share some of the blame for allowing itself to be so vulnerable?The chain of events starts with the NSA. It discovered the weakness that made the ransomware so prolific , which was then stolen by a hacking group known as Shadow Brokers, thought to be linked to the Russian government. Continue reading...
We’d like to hear from victims of recent attacks, that affected NHS hospitals and other organisations, who sent payments to restore encrypted filesAccording to analysis of the two bitcoin addresses to which the software demanded payment, fewer than a hundred victims appear to have paid the ransom.Related: How to defend your computer against the ransomware attack Continue reading...
A mobile game makes an infectiously good transition to tabletop, a card game richly rewards smart selection and a domino-strategy mashup is a quickfire winnerThere’s a faintly luddite spirit to the board game renaissance of recent years, perhaps a reaction to the heavy demands screens now make on our time. Yet there isn’t such a great divide between games built of cardboard and those spun from code. They explore similar themes and their designers frequently learn from one another.In 2007, a simple web game, Pandemic, challenged players with spreading an infection across the world. Around the same time, an unrelated board game of the same name tasked its players with preventing the spread of disease and quickly assumed cult status. Soon after, a mobile game called Plague Inc reversed the goal again, making global epidemic a mainstay of many commutes, while happily crediting the original Pandemic web game as an inspiration. Now Plague Inc has been reimagined as a board game that looks much like a homage to the board game, completing a considerable circle over 10 years. Continue reading...
Security specialists from 27 nations including Britain and the US will meet for five-day conference in Czech capitalSecurity specialists from 27 countries including Britain and the US are meeting in Prague on Monday in what has been billed as the most concerted attempt yet to counter alleged Kremlin destabilisation measures aimed at undermining western elections.The Czech interior ministry is hosting the five-day summit staged by Stratcom - Nato’s strategic communications arm – in an effort to persuade governments and the European Union to strengthen electoral processes amid rising concern over suspected interference by the Russian government under Vladimir Putin. Continue reading...
Brad Smith says ‘Wannacry’ virus attack that locked up to 200,000 computers in 150 countries is a ‘wake-up call’ amid fears more will be hit as week beginsThe massive ransomware attack that caused damage across the globe over the weekend should be a “wake-up call†for governments, the president of Microsoft has said.Related: What is 'WanaCrypt0r 2.0' ransomware and why is it attacking the NHS? Continue reading...
Dan Tehan says the government received reports of the private sector being impacted but not commonwealth organisationsAn Australian business has fallen victim to a global malware attack and there are investigations into two other reports, the federal government says.The so-called ransomware has wormed its way into thousands of computer systems in an apparent extortion plot, shutting users out unless they coughed up a payment. Continue reading...
We reveal how a confidential legal agreement is at the heart of a web connecting Robert Mercer to Britain’s EU referendumOn 18 November 2015, the British press gathered in a hall in Westminster to witness the official launch of Leave.EU. Nigel Farage, the campaign’s figurehead, was banished to the back of the room and instead an American political strategist, Gerry Gunster, took centre stage and explained its strategy. “The one thing that I know is data,†he said. “Numbers do not lie. I’m going to follow the data.â€Eighteen months on, it’s this same insight – to follow the data – that is the key to unlocking what really happened behind the scenes of the Leave campaign. On the surface, the two main campaigns, Leave.EU and Vote Leave, hated one other. Their leading lights, Farage and Boris Johnson, were sworn enemies for the duration of the referendum. The two campaigns bitterly refused even to share a platform. Continue reading...
Public sector has lessons to learn as hospital trusts and GPs struggle to recover from ransomware attackLast October the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust was subject to a cyber-attack that saw it forced to shut down its IT systems, resulting in the cancellation of almost 3,000 patient appointments.Until last Friday the incident was one of the few known examples of an attack on the NHS using ransomware, a type of software that encrypts a computer system’s files and refuses to unlock them until a payment is made. Continue reading...
Whether you’re tweeting, shopping or just browsing, internet companies are monitoring you. Here’s how to evade the snoopersNobody likes being spied on. When you’re innocently browsing the web, it’s deeply unpleasant to think that faceless technology corporations are monitoring and recording your every move.While such data collection is legal, that doesn’t mean it’s all right. There are plenty of things you might prefer to keep to yourself, such as your income, your sexuality, your political views or your membership of the Yoko Ono fanclub. For an indication of what can be inferred from your online habits, take a look at the Apply Magic Sauce tool produced by Cambridge Psychometrics Centre, which produces a profile of your personality based on Facebook and Twitter data. Continue reading...
Attack renews debate over agencies such as the NSA leaving vulnerabilities in place for strategic purposes rather than alerting companies immediatelyThe attack that temporarily crippled the NHS in Britain and dozens of other institutions across Europe and Russia reveals the failure of the US government’s protocols for warning software developers and the private sector about system vulnerabilities, a cyber-security expert told the Guardian.Related: 'Accidental hero' halts ransomware attack and warns: this is not over Continue reading...
A worldwide ransomware attack affecting almost 100 countries has hobbled parts of the NHS across England and Scotland, rendering patient information inaccessible and forcing some emergency patients to be rerouted to other hospitals. Ransomware encrypts data on infected computers and demands payment in return for the release of files
The help I get from strangers will run to many man hours by the end of this caperThe Hyundai Ioniq has its automatic gears on large, crude buttons that look as though they were designed to teach a baby how to spell. It doesn’t seem likely that hitting D will result in a forward movement, but there she goes, smooth and silent, a cheerful blue predator. All that stuff I would normally notice (the exterior, the cabin, the satnav, the driving posture): forget it. This is one woman’s struggle against her hybrid’s battery life, like Leonardo DiCaprio and the bear in The Revenant.I set off for Oxford, 57 miles, with my 107-mile fully charged battery. Acceleration is great, but nothing on the smugness. Road roar is a bit of an issue, especially when trying to listen to a tense podcast full of deep southerners making racist remarks sotto voce. Continue reading...
Malicious software has attacked computers across the NHS and companies in Spain, Russia, the Ukraine and Taiwan. What is it and how is it holding data to ransom?
Tech startup Improbable is now valued at more than $1bn after funding from Japan’s SoftBank. The British firm, started by Cambridge University graduates in 2012, creates complex virtual worlds to be used in everything from games to urban planning
From cross-platform video editing to syncing files, clipboards and apps, Microsoft is taking Windows to iOS and Android – and is warming to iTunesMicrosoft has announced the latest update to Windows 10, the Fall Creators Update, and with it some surprises – including iTunes on the Windows Store and cross-platform syncing with the iPhone and Android devices. No, hell hasn’t frozen over. Continue reading...
From Mattel’s 515-byte Auto Race to this year’s game-changing Nintendo Switch, here are the portable gaming devices that have pushed things forward Continue reading...
Police watchdog is investigating claims unit used hackers in India to obtain passwords of campaigners and journalistsA watchdog investigating claims that a Scotland Yard unit illegally accessed the private emails of hundreds of political campaigners and journalists has appealed for whistleblowers to come forward.The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) launched its investigation after an anonymous individual alleged that the unit used hackers in India to obtain the passwords of the email accounts of the campaigners, and some reporters and press photographers. Two were alleged to work for the Guardian, although neither was named. Continue reading...
Don’t scoff: psychological and social science research supports that living amid the wealthy even when you are upper-middle class is bad for your mental health
Technology | The Guardian