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...
by Jordan Erica Webber and Kat Brewster on (#2T4FV)
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...
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 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 Overrideâ€, 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...
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...
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...
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...
Described as an ‘extraordinary measure for extraordinary threats’, direct data access is one of three proposals to speed up investigationsThe European Union is seeking to make it easier for police and law enforcement agencies to retrieve electronic evidence from US tech firms, including directly from cloud storage.
Before the E3 game conference each year, the Half-Life 3 rumour mill cranks into gear, only to be destroyed by the crowbar of history. Let’s just let sleeping headcrabs lieEvery spring as the E3 video game exhibition rears up on the horizon like a vast dying sun, the rumour mill cranks into motion. Could this be the year? Could developer Valve Corp make the announcement we’ve all hoped for? Might we at last see Half-Life 3? Or Portal 3? But no. Every year those fragile hopes are dashed against the rocks of the Seattle company’s seeming indifference.Of course, there have been signs of movement over the years. In 2012, concept art showing Half-Life 2 character Alyx Vance emerged, apparently leaked from within the studio and showing the beloved fighter dressed for a frozen environment. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 ended on a cliffhanger after all. Gordon Freeman and Vance were just about to destroy the Borealis research vessel when Combine Advisors turned up and killed her father, leaving her hugging his corpse. It was like the Star Wars saga ending with Empire Strikes Back. It clearly wasn’t the intended conclusion. So people have always talked, and waited and theorised. Then earlier this year, Valve chief Gabe Newell told fans on a Reddit QA session that the company was still working on single-player titles and may even be returning to the Half-Life or Portal universes. Continue reading...
Google is attempting to bring the cultural and spiritual dimensions of Uluru to its Street View platform. To do this, they have created an interactive, audiovisual guided tour, narrated by traditional owner Sammy Wilson and with song and music by Anangu elder Reggie Uluru Continue reading...
Golden State’s traditional fanbase has stuck with them through thick and thin. But a new menace has risen from Silicon Valley ...It was hard to find anyone who begrudged Cleveland fans their championship 12 months ago. The fanbase had suffered through decades of losing and crushing defeats; there had been tears and screams and, yes, even flames. The collective futility of the Cavaliers, Indians and Browns had endured year-round, one failed season rolling into the next. And all the sports misery occurred at a time when the city and the entire region of northeast Ohio was struggling just to survive. So only the cruelest of souls were upset by the sight of a million people in the streets of Cleveland celebrating the city’s good fortune.Good luck finding a person alive who feels the same way about Warriors fans. Golden State are two wins away from winning their second NBA title in three years and entering the conversation about the greatest basketball teams of all time. They’re also two wins away from making Warriors fans perhaps the most despised in all of American sports. Continue reading...
Skyscanner and its ilk might have changed holiday planning, but they require a lot of admin. Call me old-fashioned, but I want agents to do my thinking for meIt’s been more than 20 years since Expedia was founded as a division of Microsoft, kicking off the online travel market. Today, the industry has swelled to an enormous size, taking in machine learning-powered flight bookers such as Hopper, luxury-focused bargain hunters such as Secret Escapes, and a host of mobile-first booking apps like Trivago.But I still want more. Call me lazy or entitled, but I want travel apps to do my thinking for me. Continue reading...
His pioneering journalism held the industry to the same standards as other manufacturing sectorsWalt Mossberg has written his final column. Some people in the tech industry will probably have heaved a sigh of relief, because the one guy in mainstream journalism who never drank their Kool-Aid is going dark. But for those of us who value common sense and a cussedly independent temperament, his retirement is a moment for reflection.Unlike most of the Stanford and Harvard alumni whose tech companies’ products he relentlessly scrutinised, Mossberg came from working-class origins. His grandfather was an upholsterer (and a union organiser) and his father was a door-to-door salesman who flogged dishes and blankets to millworkers. He went to Brandeis University and Columbia School of Journalism and then landed a job as a reporter (at $9,000 a year) on the Wall Street Journal, the house organ of American capitalism. Continue reading...
Games once felt connected to the hedonism of pubs, clubs and music – something we’d do well to remember in our age of being constantly plugged in at homeIn the autumn of 1995 I joined the video game magazine Edge as a staff writer. It was my first job in journalism and came at the start of Future Publishing’s glory years, its range of specialist gaming mags – Games Master, SuperPlay and the Official PlayStation Magazine – reaching their absolute pomp. We were based in Bath, in a collection of buildings throughout the picturesque city centre, and Edge was on the first floor of a converted pub, down a backstreet behind Queens Square. The editor was Jason Brookes, a Japanese-gaming obsessive and enthusiastic clubber, whose taste in dance music (Paul Oakenfold, William Orbit, BT) dominated the Edge hi-fi. We played games, we listened to music, we went clubbing, we played more games. This was my life for several glorious years.
Video game-makers usually distance products from politics. Ubisoft might help change that by rooting its new title in the fear and loathing of Trump’s USThere is an all-too familiar response when video game developers are asked if their latest project has any real-world meaning: hey, we’re just making a game, we’re not making a statement. It’s a media-trained kneejerk defence against potential controversy, a line dragged out time and time again when a producer or creative director is asked about seemingly clear parallels with genuine wars, events or issues.Last year, for example, video game site Killscreen spoke to the makers of The Division, a game about an apocalyptic terrorist attack on New York City. When asked if 9/11 had in any way inspired the setting and narrative, associate creative director Julian Gerighty seemed aghast at the comparison – and at the connection between the game and an actual incident. “At the end of the day, it’s a video game,†he said. “It’s an entertainment product … There’s no particularly political message with it.†This is a game in which soldiers are given the authority to shoot civilian looters in order to restore governmental control over a stricken city – and there’s no political message? Continue reading...
Thinktank sceptical about MoD assurances, saying cyber-attack could lead even to ‘exchange of nuclear warheads’The UK’s Trident submarine fleet is vulnerable to a “catastrophic†cyber-attack that could render Britain’s nuclear weapons useless, according to a report by a London-based thinktank.The 38-page report, Hacking UK Trident: A Growing Threat, warns that a successful cyber-attack could “neutralise operations, lead to loss of life, defeat or perhaps even the catastrophic exchange of nuclear warheads (directly or indirectly)â€. Continue reading...
Even aside from privacy concerns, sharing photos means involving your children in social media’s erratic emotional economyQ: I recently had a baby. In the days after the birth, I put a few photos of him on Facebook and was thrilled with the love that came back. Can I keep sharing photos of him on social media?A: Congratulations! Not just on the baby, but on arriving at a central dilemma of modern parenting so early in the day. You love your baby, your friends and family love your baby, and a technology exists to bring you all closer. What possible harm is there in that? Continue reading...
Berlin court rules parents of 15-year-old, who want to know if she was being bullied, cannot see her chat historyThe parents of a dead 15-year-old who appealed to Facebook to allow them access to her account to see if she was being bullied before her death have lost their claim in court.
Research has found a link between ‘technoference’ and poor child behaviour. The need for light relief is very human, but perhaps we can find a happier balanceA study published by the journal Child Development has taken a look at how parents’ use of technology affects their children’s behaviour, and has concluded that “technology-based interruptions in parent–child interactions†– a phenomenon known as “technoferenceâ€, which I’m fairly sure was a club night in Stockwell in the 1990s – could be associated with a greater incidence of poor behaviour on the part of children.Almost half (48%) of the parents in the study admitted to three daily incidents of technoference in their interactions with their kids, and the researchers say that these seem to correlate with young children being more prone to whining, sulking, restlessness, frustration and outbursts of temper. (Coincidentally, these are also the behaviours displayed by adults who are confronted with slow wifi.) Continue reading...
Our country was the victim of a hacking attack that led to ‘fake news’, says Saif Ahmed Al Thani, director of Qatar’s Government Communications OfficeYour article (Saudi Arabia and UAE block Qatari media over incendiary statements, 25 May) lends credence to the idea that fraudulent “quotes†– falsely attributed to the emir of Qatar and Qatar’s foreign minister – placed by hackers on a Qatari website might actually be genuine. They are not.Allow us set the record straight: the government of Qatar noticed the appearance of “hacked†material on the Qatar News Agency’s website at 12.15am on Wednesday 24 May. Qatar’s Government Communications Office released a statement at 1am alerting the news media that the quotes were not authentic. Most media outlets covered our statement and stopped publishing or broadcasting the fraudulent material. Continue reading...
The classic mobile has been relaunched as a distraction-free device. We dug out a device from 2000 to see how it rates in 2017Last week saw the launch of Nokia’s new incarnation of its classic 3310 mobile phone. The original, which first appeared 17 years ago, was immensely popular – 100m handsets sold – and there is an obvious nostalgic appeal in a cheap retro copy, complete with an updated version of the game Snake. Reviews suggest the £49.99 3310 would make the perfect “festival phone†– meaning, I guess, that if you dropped it into a lake of mud at 3am, you wouldn’t mind too much.The interest in the 3310 also feels a bit like longing: a wish to return to a simpler time, when a phone was just a phone, when batteries never ran out, and the world – emails, the news, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, every song ever recorded – didn’t come with you when you went somewhere. Back then, if you sat staring at your phone screen on a Tube platform, people thought you were a simpleton; there was nothing to look at. I do not consider myself to be terribly technology-dependent – the most transformative aspect of my smartphone is the fact that wherever I go, I always have a torch with me – but who wouldn’t want to return to that time, if only for a visit? I certainly would. Count me in. Continue reading...
Instagram’s evolution from careful curation to ephemeral ‘stories’ has been a success. But in becoming more like Snapchat, is it losing its reason for being?Once, Instagram was little more than a feed of pretty much every photo taken by your friends. These days, people’s expectations have changed. It’s not enough to post a well-composed picture of your life: to keep up with the Joneses you have to have a well-composed life, too.
by Rupert Higham, Andy Robertson, Matthew Collins on (#2R38S)
The latest DC Comics fighting game knocks the competition flat, while a children’s mobile game and a PSP classic offer winningly simple charmsPS4, Warner Bros, cert: 16
Methods used in ransomware attack on NHS and in up to 100 countries similar to those used by Pyongyang in the past, says Michael ChertoffNorth Korea may have been behind the ransomware cyber-attack on the NHS and up to 100 countries including the UK, a former head of the US Department of Homeland Security has claimed.Michael Chertoff, who served under George W Bush from 2005 to 2009, said that agents or allies of the Pyongyang regime were the most likely suspects for the hacking of the health service’s administration system in the UK and state infrastructures across the globe this month.
Speaking at Hay festival, writer accuses ‘aggregating news agencies’ of not taking responsibility for their contentStephen Fry has called for Facebook and other “aggregating news agencies†to be reclassified as publishers in order to stop fake news and online abuse spreading by making social media subject to the same legal responsibilities as traditional news websites.Outlining his “reformation†for the internet, as part of the Hay literary festival’s programme to mark the quincentenary of Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses in 1517, Fry accused social media platforms of refusing to “take responsibility for those dangerous, defamatory, inflammatory and fake items whose effects will have legal consequences for traditional printed or broadcast media, but which they can escapeâ€. Continue reading...
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