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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...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Thursday! 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)”. 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 “technoference”, 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.

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 escape”. Continue reading...

As music industry celebrates second straight year of growth, service hopes to buck trend of tech industry disappointments on Wall StreetThe world may love the services they provide, but the new generation of tech companies haven’t found much love on Wall Street recently. Spotify, the leading music streaming service, is hoping to change that with a share sale that could lead another round of “unicorns” to try their luck on the US stock markets. Continue reading...

I don’t know how to work my house, and without my phone I am nothingThere are many terms that have been used to describe me: man, comedian, disappointment, hammock enthusiast. In the last few years, a new one has been added to the mix: millennial. It sounded quite cool at first, as if I were part of some exclusive club with a neon logo, until I did a bit of digging and discovered that it actually means that the year I was born and the liberal parenting style of my mother and father have resulted in an adult who can’t build meaningful relationships, will never have true job satisfaction and is addicted to his phone.There was a video doing the rounds titled Millennials In The Workplace that made some clarifications: a clip from a conference being held in what looked like an Amazon warehouse. The main speaker is the renowned author and motivational guru, Simon Sinek, a glossy advice-robot who tells you that social media is ruining your life (albeit through the medium of a video on Facebook). He comes across, as we millennials might say, as a bit of a bell-end. He says we send text messages all the time because, when we get a reply it releases dopamine. “No, Simon,” I thought, “if I want a release of dopamine, I will drink a bottle of merlot.” Sinek says we struggle to have face-to-face conversations. To which the answer is: “No, Simon, I am fantastic at face-to-face conversations after drinking a bottle of merlot.” Continue reading...

From retro racers Night Driver, Pole Position and Out Run to 3D titles Daytona USA, Ridge Racer and Gran Turismo, these games share top spot on the podium Continue reading...

A smart story of obsession and technology investigates what smartphones are doing to our soulsThis debut has been acclaimed as the “First Great Instagram Novel”, and what it does is both new and strange – and deeply familiar. From the infancy of the industrial revolution, novels have thrived on technological change, dramatising the aesthetics of machines as well as the changes (usually deformations) they make to the human soul. The pantheon of post-industrial writing is Humphrey Jennings’s Pandaemonium: The Coming of the Machine 1660-1886, and if there were to be a sequel for our digital age, Sympathy would earn a place in it for its exquisite, sustained observation of our use of smartphones. When the narrator, Alice Hare, takes possession of her loved one’s device, she says: “It felt kind of like holding her brain, and I held it like that, my palm flat, my right index finger light and quick, as if the phone were jellied or slimy.”Full of these casually creepy, very 21st-century observations, Sympathy is an astute, quirky, slow-burning satire on emerging codes of behaviour, intergenerational differences, globalisation, the tech industry and the vortex of the dark web. Alice tumbles through an online rabbit hole of absurdities and dream-like connections that ultimately leads into a nightmarish mise en abyme and an illegal, orgiastic rave – rather a long way from Lewis Carroll. Continue reading...

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

Alison needs to replace her smartphone and she wants one that will take good photographs in a wide range of lighting conditionsContinuing the theme from last week, I need advice on replacing my Huawei smartphone, following an unfortunate incident involving a car door. My phone is also my camera, so my main criterion is that it will take good shots in most lights. The Huawei, while fine in other ways, fell short in the photography department. I’d be interested in recommendations at different price points. AlisonSmartphone cameras are now amazingly good, and if you buy a top-end smartphone, it’s increasingly hard to take a bad photograph with it. We’ve therefore started to see some Darwinian-style speciation as manufacturers look for profitable niches. Over the past five years, we’ve seen more dual-lens cameras appear with extra wide angle or telephoto features. Some manufacturers have improved the front-facing camera to target people who mainly take selfies. Some phones are waterproof, like the Apple iPhone 7 and the Samsung Galaxy S7.

AlphaGo has won its second game against China’s Ke Jie, sealing the three-game match in its favourGoogle’s Go-playing AI has won its second game against the world’s best player of the ancient Asian board game, Chinese 19-year-old Ke Jie, taking the three-game match in the process.AlphaGo, the AI created by Google subsidiary DeepMind, reported that Ke’s first 50 moves were “played perfectly”, according to DeepMind chief executive Demis Hassabis. In the post-game press conference, Hassabis, who was a child chess prodigy, said: “For the first 100 moves, it was the closest we’ve ever seen anyone play against the Master version of AlphaGo.” Continue reading...

Report detailing analysis of injury logs from factory in Fremont, California, for past several years gives troubling glimpse into company’s safety recordTesla factory workers were injured at a rate 31% higher than industry average – and seriously injured at a rate more than double the industry average – in 2015, according to a new report from a worker safety organization.The report gives the most complete picture to date of injury rates at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California. Tesla has strenuously defended its safety record since workers went public with complaints in February and announced they were seeking to unionize with the United Auto Workers. The Guardian recently published an investigation into the factory, where some workers allege that aggressive production goals set by CEO Elon Musk have resulted in unsafe conditions and avoidable injuries. Continue reading...

Compared with gold-standard laboratory measurements, scientists found devices poor at tracking calories burned, but good at monitoring heart rateFitness devices can help monitor heart rate but are unreliable at keeping tabs on calories burned, research has revealed.Scientists put seven consumer devices through their paces, comparing their data with gold-standard laboratory measurements. Continue reading...

The Japanese company’s console was quirky, expensive, and short on games – but with the Legend of Zelda sequel it had a title worth buying it forThe Switch was Nintendo’s last roll of the dice. By the beginning of this year, the company was in dire straits: a decade on from the breakout success of the motion-controlled Wii, its follow-up, called the Wii U, had failed to take the world by storm.A quirky machine, the Wii U replaced the controller with a hybrid tablet, seeking to replicate the success of Nintendo’s handheld DS console, which has two screens. Instead, weak launch sales and a poor initial lineup of games, combined with confusing branding that left many unclear whether it was even a new device at all, served to hand the console generation to Sony and Microsoft, who focused their fire on traditional gamers. Continue reading...

Hybrid between a home console and a handheld machine looks set to be games company’s first big hit since the WiiNintendo’s share price has hit its highest point in seven years, thanks to booming sales of the new Switch, its hybrid between a traditional home console and a handheld gaming machine.The company’s share price is up 102% year on year as the Switch looks set to be the company’s first bona fide hit since the Wii hit the shelves more than a decade ago. Continue reading...

Government barred broadcasters and online publishers from livestreaming game that saw China’s Ke Jie narrowly beatenDeepMind’s board game-playing AI, AlphaGo, may well have won its first game against the Go world number one, Ke Jie, from China – but but most Chinese viewers could not watch the match live.The Chinese government had issued a censorship notice to broadcasters and online publishers, warning them against livestreaming Tuesday’s game, according to China Digital Times, a site that regularly posts such notices in the name of transparency. Continue reading...

In wake of objectionable videos of murders, rapes and assaults, Europe proposes new rules and fines to force social media firms to tackle online videoFacebook, Twitter and YouTube are facing tough new pan-European laws, forcing them to remove hate speech and sexually explicit videos or face steep fines.European Union ministers approved proposals from the European Commission on Tuesday, which seek to tackle the rise in objectionable videos posted to social media platforms. Continue reading...

Peter Oborne and Tom Roberts’s catalogue of the tycoon’s Tweets suggests it was satisfying for many voters to see a rich celebrity complain and accuseIn the midst of the recent maelstrom surrounding the firing of FBI director James Comey, Donald Trump found time to get on Twitter and troll one of his long-time foes, comedian Rosie O’Donnell. Retweeting a 2016 post of hers that called for Comey to be fired, Trump declared: “We finally agree on something Rosie.” One had to imagine that little Trump did during that week gave him such a sense of mastery and control.Peter Oborne and Tom Roberts have anthologised and annotated Trump’s tweets, starting with his very first, in May 2009, and extending to March of this year, when the book went to press. Trump now occupies what arguably is – or was – the most important political position in the west. And yet his public contradictions and inchoate statements have made it hard to know what is really going on in his head. All his books have been ghostwritten. Twitter is one of the few places we can look for evidence of Trump’s own voice. Continue reading...

Department and parents say data stolen from Blackburn high school, posted to file-sharing site and fake emails sent to parentsHackers have stolen student information from a Melbourne high school, posting it online and sending emails to parents pretending to be from the principal.The Victorian education department is working with police to identify hackers who illegally downloaded information from Blackburn high school’s computer system. Continue reading...

18-year-old woman in Toronto claims driver refused to allow her to leave the car and attempted to take her to a private locationToronto police have charged an Uber driver with kidnapping and forcible confinement after a passenger alleged that he refused to allow her leave the car and instead attempted to take her to a private location.

Tens of thousands of drivers eligible for a refund after company admits it took too much commission from drivers’ fares for two-and-a-half yearsUber will pay New York City drivers tens of millions of dollars after admitting to underpaying them for two-and-a-half years by taking a larger cut of drivers’ fares than it was entitled.Under the terms of service the ride-hailing company put in place in November 2014, Uber was supposed to take its percentage of the commission – ranging between 20% and 25% – after deducting sales tax and a local fee to fund benefits for injured drivers. Instead, the company calculated its commission on the gross fare, resulting in more money for Uber and less for drivers. Continue reading...

New phone’s feature has been bypassed less than a month after it was shipped to public, adding fuel to debate about biometric securityThe iris-recognition feature in Samsung’s new Galaxy S8 smartphone has been defeated by German hackers, less than a month after it hit shelves around the world.A video posted by the Chaos Computer Club, a long-running hacker collective formed in Berlin in 1981, shows the security feature being fooled by a dummy eye into thinking that it is being unlocked by a legitimate owner. Continue reading...

The 2-in-1 Windows tablet hybrid updated with 7th-generation Intel Core processors and new rounded design, as Microsoft targets China with Shanghai launchMicrosoft has announced a new version of its Surface Pro Windows tablet that is thinner, lighter and has a longer battery life.

The divisive icons have become a mainstay of Android, but now they’re being retired in favour of more conventional smiley facesThe best emojis on the market are no more: Google’s weird blobs are being retired in favour of more conventional circular yellow faces.First introduced in 2013 with Android 4.4, the blobs have been a divisive feature of the company’s operating system. Some love them for their unique spin on otherwise indistinguishable emojis, while others hate the potential for miscommunication they introduce when speaking across multiple platforms. Continue reading...

Experts say the ‘alt-right’ have stormed mainstream consciousness by using ‘humor’ and ambiguity as tactics to wrong-foot their opponentsEarlier this month, hundreds of “alt-right” protesters occupied the rotunda at Boston Common in the name of free speech. The protest included far-right grouplets old and new – from the Oath Keepers to the Proud Boys. But there were no swastikas or shaved heads in sight.Instead, the protest imagery was dominated by ostensibly comedic images, mostly cribbed from forums and social media. It looked a little like an animated version of a favorite “alt-right” message board, 4chan. Continue reading...

ITV and Eurosport to be on offer for the first time at extra cost, along with Discovery and reality TV channel HayuAmazon is to add more than 40 TV channels to its UK streaming service, including ITV and live sport for the first time, upping the stakes against rival Netflix and pay-TV operators such as Sky.

Birdman director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s latest project is an innovative and immersive account of the horrors faced at the Mexico-US borderRelated: The Day After review - Hong Sang-soo's boozy comedy is diverting but slightSo – the envelope is pushed a little further, the limits of cinema questioned a little harder, the rectangular perimeter fence of the movie screen challenged a little bit more confidently. Continue reading...

With Facebook becoming a key electoral battleground, researchers are studying how automated accounts are used to alter political debate online

Company tried to dismiss a lawsuit filed by US labor department, claiming that a government attorney may have violated ethics rules in speaking to the GuardianGoogle has tried to restrict reporting on a high-stakes gender discrimination case brought by the US government and fought to have the case thrown out of court because of a federal attorney’s comments to a reporter.Court documents reveal that Google unsuccessfully argued that a judge should dismiss a lawsuit filed by the US Department of Labor (DoL), claiming that a government attorney may have violated ethics rules by doing an interview with the Guardian on 7 April. Continue reading...

Poor gameplay mechanics are a recurring theme in the return of these role-playing, war strategy and adventure franchisesPS4, PSVita, Pqube, cert: 12

He was tour manager for the Band, producer of Mean Streets… so why, at nearly 70, is Jonathan Taplin taking on Facebook and co?We are all – or nearly all – slaves to technology. Think about how many times you consult Google every day. Consider the role that social media like Facebook and Twitter play in your lives. And when you buy a book, or countless other items, it’s increasingly likely that you purchased it from Amazon.These brand names have come to define our lives in ways that have crept up on us so that now we can’t imagine being without them. But has their influence grown too large? For all the futuristic idealism that marked their beginning, have they turned into rampant capitalist monopolies that are indifferent to the damage they wreak, and contemptuous of the governments whose taxes they avoid? Continue reading...

No one knows more about petite ’n’ poky cars than Suzuki – prepare to let the new Ignis broaden your horizonsPrice: £10,249

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...

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...