Technology | The Guardian

‘Alexander’ tells how Shaltai-Boltai, or Humpty Dumpty, terrorised Russian officials for three years, combining hacking, leaking and extortionWearing a Christmas jumper emblazoned with reindeer, Alexander sits in a bar in Riga. He has a remarkable story to tell. After several years hiding in the shadows, he is, or at least claims to be, the last member still at large of Russia’s most notorious band of hackers and leakers.Shaltai-Boltai, or Humpty Dumpty, terrorised Russian officials for nearly three years, combining hacking, leaking and extortion, while retaining an impenetrable cloak of anonymity. The group would post online samples of emails from officials they had hacked, and put the rest of the cache up for sale: the incriminating information could then either be bought back by the original sender, or snapped up by enemies. Continue reading...

It is a fuzzy, lo-fi world of multi-coloured bricks and boxy animals. So why do millions of people want to live inside Minecraft? We travel to Sweden to find outYou wouldn’t know, turning into this nondescript street in Stockholm and padding up the stone steps to Minecraft HQ, that anything special was being made up here. The truth only becomes clear when you step through the door and discover the endless shelves filled with awards (including a Bafta) and the vast boxes of Minecraft merchandise piled in every corner. This is where they make what many regard as a digital version of Lego: a game that’s been downloaded more than 100m times on PCs, consoles and smartphones since its launch in 2009. If you have children aged between six and 16, the chances are they’re hooked on this strange, blocky pursuit. And the chances are you’ve asked yourself: why?To truly understand the appeal of Minecraft, you need to understand the studio behind it. Five years ago, when makers Mojang moved to this first-floor office in the trendy area of Södermalm, they wanted it to have the feel of a gentlemen’s club. In came Chesterfield sofas, a snooker table and lots of dark oak furniture. They even designed a Mojang coat of arms, which hangs near an enormous banqueting table. The aim was to make a nice place to hang out, meet people and have fun – an environment that felt personal. In short, they wanted the office to be like Minecraft. Continue reading...

Released in 2013, Rockstar’s epic gangland adventure is currently No 2 in the UK games chart. Is gaming having its dad rock moment?In a recent conference call to discuss its latest quarterly financial results, the games publisher Take Two provided some astonishing statistics about Grand Theft Auto V. According to the company’s CEO, Strauss Zelnick, the open-world gangster adventure, originally released in 2013, has now sold more than 75m copies.Not only that, but NPD Group sales data shows it was the sixth best-selling game across all formats in 2016. Three years after its release. If you look at the current UK games chart, GTA V is at number two, beaten only by Resident Evil 7, released last month. Why is this happening?

Canadian Avery Alder created her tabletop game Monsterhearts to channel her own experiences of LGBT adolescence. Characters are teenagers but with supernatural powers, where a roll of the dice is as random as a hormonal surgePete had been having a rough day. First he was late for school, then he’d been cruelly mocked by his classmate Britney and her posh-girl clique. Now he was developing a horrible suspicion that he might have eaten his neighbour’s cat.Fortunately for the local feline population, Pete was a fictional character. A bemused and terrified teenage werewolf, he was part of a pen-and-paper roleplaying game called Monsterhearts, whose players assume the roles of supernatural creatures traversing the social minefield of school. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matter.It’s Wednesday. Continue reading...

Photographer Gab Scanu, 20, has amassed a huge following on Instagram with his aerial shots of Australian landscapes and coastlines. He spoke to us about his work

Amazon’s smart voice assistant takes to the road with new accessory for anything from music and audiobooks to shopping and smarthome controlAmazon’s Alexa voice assistant is making its way into cars in the UK, bringing voice controlled music and even the ability to remotely control smart home devices onto the road.

Reform thinktank says sector could be ‘the next Uber’ and staff should embrace the gig economy amid rise in automationAlmost 250,000 public sector workers could lose their jobs to robots over the next 15 years, according to a new report which claims machines would be more efficient and save billions of pounds.Reform, a right-of-centre thinktank, says websites and artificial intelligence “chat bots” could replace up to 90% of Whitehall’s administrators, as well as tens of thousands in the NHS and GPs’ surgeries, by 2030 – saving as much as £4bn a year. Continue reading...

Simple rock-styling, good controls, excellent battery life and great sound, make these relatively compact on-ear wireless headphones worth a listenMarshall knocked it out of the park with its last set of Bluetooth headphones, the Major II Bluetooth, which means the new Mid Bluetooth have big shoes to fill.

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

The defence secretary, Michael Fallon, appears ignorant of well-established UK and US military programmes designed to modify public perceptions in conflict zones (Nato must counter Russia’s ‘weaponising’ of lies – Fallon, 3 February). A prototype system was first reported in detail by Nick Fielding and Ian Cobain in the Guardian nearly six years ago – just as Nato began air attacks on Libya (Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media, 18 March 2011).I quote: “… it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives … each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details … up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries”. Each operator would be able to masquerade as “10 separate identities”. Continue reading...

Archivist Jason Scott has made it his mission to record digital culture for future generations. But why are we so keen to relive the days of Geocities websites and 56k modems?Jason Scott is a “guerilla internet archivist”. Someone’s got to be. If you’ve got some content embedded in a site that’s about to disappear, then he and his team of coders and data engineers go in there and “Ocean’s Eleven” the joint. In the name of digital archaeology, they migrate as much data as they can to a safe harbour even as the main site goes down. “We swoop in and, to the best of our ability, take a snapshot,” he says.Scott is interested in conserving the stuff we have forgotten has value. Increasingly, our culture plays itself out on the internet, yet even now we have a tendency to view what we do on there as trivial. Or we make the mistake of assuming that digital means for ever. “The problem is, the internet’s systems have been designed as though everything goes on indefinitely,” he says. “There are no agreed-upon shutdown procedures. When users die, what do you do? Because their accounts live on, and suddenly Facebook is telling you your dead friend also likes Snickers bars. Often, you don’t even know who’s running a site. It’s as if you didn’t know who was in charge of your water supply; then one day, it just stopped ...” Continue reading...

Banking is easier than ever thanks to contactless and mobile transactions. But making it simple to spend money isn’t all goodA recent report from the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute has revealed what many people with mental health problems already knew – mental illess can have a significant, and often terrifying, impact on your finances.Anxious? Good luck tackling the bank statements piling up, unopened. Having a manic episode? Time to spend thousands of pounds on things you’ll never use! Depressed? … What was my pin again? Continue reading...

Fitness trackers are not just for humans anymore – a growing range of electronic collars and cameras can help you monitor your pet’s location, activity and even emotional stateWe are becoming a species obsessed with data. Not content with monitoring our own sleeping, eating and exercising habits, many of us could soon be tracking the lives of our pets, too. Where did your cat go last night? How many calories did your dog eat today? What is your snake thinking? Knowing the answers to such questions – well, the first two, anyway – is becoming ever easier, and the advantages of doing so are increasing.Related: Puppies' response to speech could shed light on baby-talk, suggests study Continue reading...

Social media start-up is following a familiar path, but attitude to tax and reluctance to be ‘creepy’ set it apart from its peersSnap, the company formerly known as Snapchat, has finally confirmed it is planning to go public, with an IPO expected sometime in March. If all goes to plan, the company should net somewhere in the realm of $25bn (£20bn) from the public offering, shooting it past Twitter in market cap terms and cementing its position as one of the largest social media companies in the world.But while it sounds like the typical final evolution of a Silicon Valley titan, Snap has deliberately charted a very different route from its most obvious competitors for much of its history. Continue reading...

UK defence secretary accuses Moscow of ‘weaponising misinformation’ to disable democratic machineryNato must begin to compete on the cyber-battlefield to counter Russian hacking, which is “weaponising misinformation” to create a post-truth age, the defence secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, has said.In his hardest-hitting comments yet about Russia, Fallon said that in the past two years it had targeted the US, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Montenegro, which becomes a full Nato member this year. He blamed Russia for helping create the fake information age. Continue reading...

The ephemeral app is set to go public, could be worth $25bn, and is seen as the only serious challenger to Facebook’s audience. But can the ascent continue?What is the value of Snapchat? The notoriously secretive parent company of the ephemeral messaging app is about to find out. Snap Inc has this week released paperwork designed to drum up interest in its initial public offering, scheduled for March, which some analysts say could value the company at between $20bn and $25bn – making it one of the biggest technology offerings in recent years.Snapchat was created in September 2011 as a selfie app that let users share pictures that deleted themselves once they had been viewed. It quickly developed a reputation as a sexting app, although this wasn’t representative of how the app was actually being used. Continue reading...

Government does not appear to have a coordinated strategy and agencies tasked with safeguarding are not consolidated, says MPs’ reportConfidence in the government’s ability to protect Britain from high-level cyber-attacks is being undermined by a skills shortage, parliament’s spending watchdog has said.Ministers have taken too long to consolidate the “alphabet soup” of agencies tasked with safeguarding the UK from cyber-attacks and there appears to be no coordination across the public sector, the public accounts committee (PAC) said. Continue reading...

Online retailer announces 55% rise in year-on-year profit but even a 22% bump in revenue can’t match Wall Street’s expectationsAmazon had a bumper holiday, as the online retailer announced a 55% rise in fourth-quarter profit on Thursday for the three months ending 31 December, but its share price fell in after hours trading after the retail and services giant narrowly missed Wall Street’s sales expectations.For years, Amazon eschewed profits for growth, to the criticism of many investors. Profits for the final quarter of 2016 rose to $749m from $482m a year earlier, the seventh straight profitable quarter for Amazon. Continue reading...

John helps run a small museum, and they need a screen to show what’s on display upstairs. What are the options?I help run a small museum in a historic building, and it’s hard for anyone with mobility issues to access an upper floor. To comply with accreditation requirements, we want some way to show what we have on display upstairs, using photos of exhibits and a short video.On a recent visiting to a National Trust property, I saw a tablet in use for this purpose. If we do this, which device would suit our needs? Our budget is £200 to £250. If we could use the device for other tasks, such as word processing, that would be helpful. Is a Windows PC out of the question on this budget? How much more would we need to spend? JohnYou can use almost any type of computer for this purpose, from a small tablet to a large all-in-one PC. You can also use almost any operating system, including Android, Apple’s iOS, Windows and Linux. The best choice will depend on your programming abilities and factors such as the amount of physical space available, and whether the device is supervised at all times. Continue reading...

In the backstreets of Bondi I meet with other mindless midnight scrollers who, like me, want to stop taking their phones to the toiletThe first step to acknowledging addiction is to, well, acknowledge the addiction – and get help. So I am here in the backstreets of Bondi, ringing on the buzzer of a double-storey terrace. It’s the first time I’ve attended a support group and I’m nervous.I’m at the home of Matt Ringrose – and tonight in Sydney he is holding a meeting for mobile device addicts. Of which I am one. Continue reading...

Taxi company, perceived to be pro-Trump, accused of taking advantage of protests against migrant travel banSo many people have been deleting their Uber accounts, the company has set up an automated process.#DeleteUber was trending for much of the weekend after Uber lifted surge pricing around John F Kennedy airport during protests about Trump’s ban on migration from seven Islamic nations. Whether Uber was actively attempting to counter the strike is a matter of dispute – the company ended its “surge pricing” shortly after the end of the protest – but its actions, combined with a number of other aspects of perceived support for Trump including chief executive Travis Kalanick’s membership of a presidential advisory board, proved the final straw for many. Continue reading...

Government documents show the PayPal mogul has not met the residency requirements – but he has donated $1m to Christchurch earthquake reliefPeter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of Paypal, was granted New Zealand citizenship despite not meeting the usual requirements, new documents have revealed.Details of Thiel’s application have been released which show that he was granted citizenship due to his “exceptional circumstances” and because it was believed to be in the public interest. Continue reading...

Rumours swirl of connection to revelations about US election hacking, as state media says Sergei Mikhailov and Dmitry Dokuchayev ‘betrayed their oath’Two of Moscow’s top cybersecurity officials are facing treason charges for cooperating with the CIA, according to a Russian news report.The accusations add further intrigue to a mysterious scandal that has had the Moscow rumour mill working in overdrive for the past week, and come not long after US intelligence accused Russia of interfering in the US election and hacking the Democratic party’s servers. Continue reading...

With ride-hailing services a focal point amid divisions over Trump’s migration ban, some tech workers hope their bosses will take a stronger standFor the average ride-hail user in a major city, there are few differences between Uber and Lyft. Lyft is pink and fuzzy; Uber is sleek and shiny. Both get you where you need to go at a lower price than a taxi, and both rely on independent contractors – a business model that has been lambasted by taxi drivers and labor advocates for years.But over the weekend, as #DeleteUber began to trend on Twitter and Facebook amid widespread outrage over the company’s openness to working with Donald Trump and apparent strike-breaking during a taxi work stoppage to protest Trump’s anti-Muslim executive order, Lyft was presented with a golden opportunity to brand itself as the good ride-hail company. Continue reading...

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

Leaders of top tech companies including Facebook and Microsoft challenge order as Y Combinator boss says it’s time for sector to speak out

How James Bond, an abusive Parisian cabbie and one man’s frustration with going out in San Francisco led to a transport revolution

Anxious Americans are buying into New Zealand as the perfect bolt-holeAt the Republican party convention in Cleveland last July, Trump donor Peter Thiel declared himself ‘“most of all, proud to be an American”. So it came as something of a surprise for New Zealanders to discover that the PayPal co-founder and Facebook board member had become an honorary Kiwi – joining a growing band of wealthy Americans seeking a haven from a possible global apocalypse.Thiel was recently revealed to have bought a £4.5m lakeside property near the New Zealand town of Wanaka in 2015. When New Zealand Herald reporter Matt Nippert asked why Thiel had been allowed to buy land that appears to fit the classification of “sensitive” without permission from the country’s Overseas Investment Office, he was told it wasn’t necessary – Thiel was already a citizen. Continue reading...

The agreement of the NHS to hand over patient information to the Home Office immigration authorities (Report, 25 January) fills us with anger and dismay. Patient confidentiality is one of the cornerstones of an ethical and effective healthcare system. That is why, in the absence of a court order, the NHS does not share even the address of a patient with the police or any other public body, except in the most serious cases of harm to the person, involving murder, rape or manslaughter.There is an obvious asymmetry in adding immigration offences as the one further category where such information can be shared. It marks the intrusion of a political agenda into how our medical records are kept and safeguarded. It shows that NHS Digital cannot be trusted with our confidential information. While this decision affects only a small minority of patients, such an erosion of rights always begins with someone else but ends up affecting us all. Continue reading...

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

Scientists say pronouncements of US president and global tensions have brought new ‘time’ forward by 30 secondsThe election of Donald Trump and wider geopolitical turbulence are so dangerous that the scientists behind the Doomsday Clock have pushed it forward to 2 minutes and 30 seconds before midnight.The new “time” means experts at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists believe the earth is closer to imminent peril than at any point in the last 64 years. Continue reading...

When the search giant bought the artificial intelligence company, part of the deal was setting up an ethics board. Three years on, where is it?Three years ago, artificial intelligence research firm DeepMind was acquired by Google for a reported £400m. As part of the acquisition, Google agreed to set up an ethics and safety board to ensure that its AI technology is not abused.The existence of the ethics board wasn’t confirmed at the time of the acquisition announcement, and the public only became aware of it through a leak to industry news site The Information. But in the years since, senior members of DeepMind have publicly confirmed the board’s existence, arguing that it is one of the ways that the company is trying to “lead the way” on ethical issues in AI. Continue reading...

Donnie lost a friend affected by dementia, and would like to know what sort of device could have been used to locate himA former colleague developed dementia. He wandered off and was found three days later in a small wood a few miles away. Sadly, he died on his way to hospital. What sort of electronic device could have been used to locate him sooner?I’m 85 and a Guardianista since 11 December 1953 (National Service call-up). DonnieLocation tracking is a rapidly growing field, to the point where it looks as though almost everyone will be tracked within the next decade or so. Parents are tracking children and pets, and sometimes their own parents. Health services and care homes are tracking patients. Local authorities and other employers are tracking lone workers, for safety reasons. Distributors and delivery services are tracking vehicles and sometimes couriers. Military organisations are tracking soldiers. Millions of people are using fitness bands to track themselves, their heart rates, their sleep patterns and so on. Continue reading...

Facebook is testing ‘Stories’ in Ireland, after two previous moves to copy the feature from SnapchatIt’s happened again.Previously from Facebook: two clones of Snapchat Stories, two attempted acquisitions (one of Snapchat, one of a Chinese company making Snapchat-style camera apps), four standalone apps, two ephemeral messaging implementations, and five new cameras with AR lenses. (See also 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) Continue reading...

There’s a revolution going on over how we use our mobiles – and it’s happening in your notificationsAre you still clicking on apps on your phone? That’s so 2016. Notifications are the new apps, bots are the new notifications, and the way you use your smartphone is likely to change as much over the next five years as it has over that past five.That’s the outcome of changes to iOS and Android which make it easier than ever to have complex interactions with your phone even when the screen is locked. Now app developers are catching on. Continue reading...

Damien Chazelle’s musical paean to Hollywood outshines James McAvoy in Split and Vin Diesel’s return as action hero Xander CageEach awards season, the market typically anoints one runaway box-office winner that captures the imagination of audiences, with notable examples from the last decade being The King’s Speech (2011) and Slumdog Millionaire (2009). Last year, that film was The Revenant – a 156-minute survival ordeal that hardly looked a commercial slam-dunk on paper, but which achieved a muscular £23.4m by the end of its UK run. Continue reading...

Company to tighten up guidelines on its Discover service, banning semi-nude photos without editorial value and encouraging fact-checkingSnapchat is tightening up its guidelines for publishers on its Discover service, banning the posting of risque images without editorial value, and clarifying guidelines intended to prevent the spread of fake news on the platform.The changes, according to a spokeswoman for Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, are intended to “empower our editorial partners to do their part to keep Snapchat an informative, factual and safe environment for everyone”. Continue reading...

Capcom’s survival horror series goes back to its origins as a truly shocking, challenging and terrifying experienceWho lives in a house like this? It’s a question the Japanese horror series Resident Evil has been asking of its players since 1996, when it first locked us inside an aristocratic mansion on the outskirts of Racoon City, somewhere in the American mid-west. There, behind creaking doors and sliding oak panels, the answer was a grotesque menagerie of ragged zombies, bloody Doberman hounds and terrifying Homeric snakes. Since then both the locale and the locals have changed, from Resident Evil 4’s sojourn to a dejected Spanish forest to the fifth game’s contentious trip to sweltering African townships.Swampy, buzzing Louisiana is the setting for this, the seventh game, which, thanks to the involvement of the Texan writer Richard Pearsey (Spec Ops: The Line; 1979 Revolution) takes its cues not from Hammer Horror but from Truman Capote’s harrowing non-fiction novel In Cold Blood and the 1974 slasher film Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Protagonist Ethan Winters arrives at the gates of a derelict house on the edge of a fetid bayou on the trail of his presumed-dead wife, Mia. Inside the home he finds the Bakers, a hick family who live in squalor. There’s a dead crow in the microwave. There’s a cascade of offal in the fridge. There’s a mangled deer in the cellar. What else would you expect from a family that built a morgue in the basement? Continue reading...

The new Volkswagen Tiguan is an unlikely blend of two wild animals. See if you can guess what they arePrice: from £23,140

There are too many unanswered questions when it comes to the game’s story, but to get bogged down in these frustrations is to deny its intoxicating thrillPart of the joy of video games is that they can offer a level of control that’s so often lacking from real life. They allow you to take your fate in your own two hands – a cool head and nimble fingers will decide whether you dodge a blow in Dark Souls, pull off an outrageous feint in FIFA, or make Mario leap the extra hair’s breadth that separates life from death.Gravity Rush takes the opposite tack, sacrificing precision and finesse for the thrill of the unpredictable. Your character, Kat, can manipulate gravity, able to decide which way is “down”, allowing her to tumble gracelessly through the sky in any direction, the world tilting and lurching around her. This isn’t flying, it’s falling sideways through crowded cities, crashing through crates and knocking off chimney pots. Continue reading...

Agreement with Federal Trade Commission covers statements Uber made while trying to recruit more drivers to expand its service and remain ahead of LyftUber is paying $20m to settle allegations that it duped people into driving for its ride-hailing service with false promises about how much they would earn and how much they would have to pay to finance a car.The agreement announced on Thursday with the Federal Trade Commission covers statements Uber made from late 2013 until 2015 while trying to recruit more drivers to expand its service and remain ahead of its main rival, Lyft. Continue reading...

A coalition of more than 70 social and racial justice organizations urged Facebook to adopt reforms that would better target abusive content and harassmentFacebook allows white supremacists to spread violent threats while censoring Black Lives Matter posts and activists of color, according to civil rights groups that called on the technology company to fix its “racially biased” moderation system.“Activists in the Movement for Black Lives have routinely reported the takedown of images discussing racism and during protests, with the justification that it violates Facebook’s Community Standards,” the groups wrote in a letter on Wednesday to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and director of global policy Joel Kaplan. “At the same time, harassment and threats directed at activists based on their race, religion and sexual orientation is thriving on Facebook.” Continue reading...

Reversible lanes pose problem for autonomous cars and trucks, but Amazon has worked out a possible solutionAmazon is working on self-driving cars, according to a new patent that deals with the complex task of navigating reversible lanes.The patent, filed in November 2015 and granted on Tuesday, covers the problem of how to deal with reversible lanes, which change direction depending on the bulk of the traffic flow. This type of lane is typically used to manage commuter traffic into and out of cities, particularly in the US. Continue reading...

The place to talk about games and other things that matterIt’s Wednesday! I’ve set up the next three days so I shouldn’t miss one again! Continue reading...

Speaking for the company, which is accused of stealing code from Id Software, Zuckerberg said: ‘It’s common that people claim they own some part of the deal’Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, appeared in court to testify on behalf of the social media giant’s virtual reality company Oculus Rift on Tuesday, as it was accused of stealing trade secrets from Id Software, maker of the Doom and Quake games.“I’m here because I believe they’re false,” Zuckerberg said of the charges, “and it’s important to testify to that.” He characterized the plaintiffs as opportunists: “It’s pretty common when you announce a big deal that people just come out of the woodwork and claim they own some part of the deal.” Continue reading...

Promo videos showed Lily drone filming people autonomously, but court claim says shots were taken by skilled professionals using a more expensive cameraLily Robotics, the defunct manufacturer of the world’s first “selfie drone”, is being sued over allegations that it faked product shots and misled consumers about the capability of its prototype devices.The lawsuit alleges that videos on Lily’s website, presented as though they had been taken by the drone, were in fact shot by a mixture of GoPro cameras and DJI drones, a competitor model that costs up to four times as much and requires a skilled filmmaker to manually control the camera. Continue reading...

By 2025 most of today’s drivers are unlikely to even want to own a car. But will we still have gridlock? Will you need to pass a test? We asked the expertsFrom forecourt to scrapyard, a new car in the UK lasts an average of 13.9 years, which is why if you got one today, it might very well be the last car you buy. Over the next decade, accelerating autonomous driving technology, including advances in artificial intelligence, sensors, cameras, radar and data analytics, are set to transform not only how we drive (or, indeed, are driven), but the notion of car ownership itself. “Autonomous driving has become the next major battlefield for the car industry,” says Luca Mentuccia, automotive global MD at Accenture.The six levels of automation, defined under international standards by the Society of Automotive Engineers, range from “no automation” to “full automation”, explains Sven Raeymaekers, of tech investment banker GP Bullhound. “If you look at the most recent predictions, the majority of car manufacturers estimate the first highly to fully automated vehicles [AVs] will hit the market between 2020-2025,” he says. Continue reading...

Nintendo are back with their latest games console, the Nintendo Switch. The device revealed in full on Friday is being described as a hybrid system. It works as a traditional home console, plugging into your TV, but it can also be slid out of its dock and played on the go, via a built in screen. It will cost $299.99 in US and £279.99 in UK and goes on sale on March 3