Technology | The Guardian

From a young age, humans love to press buttons that light up and make a noise. The thrill of positive feedback lies at the heart of addiction to gambling, games and social media• Read the text version Continue reading...

Maureen Ohlhausen, the commission’s sole Republican and its acting chair under Trump, defended using big data to alter pricing from consumer to consumerThe acting head of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under Donald Trump said that the agency is “not primarily a regulator” in a conversation with the Guardian on Monday.Maureen Ohlhausen, the commission’s sole Republican and its acting chair under Trump, said the FTC was primarily a law enforcement agency and called for wait-and-see approach to enforcement during a discussion at a conference of cybersecurity professionals on Monday at the Nasdaq. She also defended the use of big data to offer consumers different prices for the same good and said she wanted manufacturers of internet-connected household devices to decide best practices among themselves. The event was held by the National Cybersecurity Alliance and Nasdaq. Continue reading...

In Kampala, motorcycle taxis are notoriously dangerous. SafeBoda aims to change this. The company, which has just launched an Uber-style app to connect drivers with riders, provides helmets and teaches employees to handle dangerous roads and give first aid Continue reading...

‘I’m in a Guildford hotel room, afraid, at 5.45pm. There’s a smart television mounted on the wall behind me’I only got a “smart” television set 18 months ago, so I have already avoided years of covert surveillance by the CIA, the FBI, MI5, CI5 and NWA. No one is safe from Samsung’s all-seeing Eye of Sauron. Apparently, a deeply embedded program currently enables the intelligence agencies to note and monitor anyone who is watching ITV’s The Nightly Show, in the belief that they must be a weird loner-misfit, inexplicably fascinated by human suffering, a ticking social time bomb just waiting to explode.I am a late adopter of new technology. If I had played the ape at the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey, I would have thrown the bone up in the air, and then Stanley Kubrick would have cut, not to a similarly shaped satellite swooping through the cosmos in the far future, but to me, some years later, still throwing the bone up in the air, and obstinately refusing banana-based inducements to upgrade to a more aerodynamic bone. Continue reading...

Microsoft tries to sell cloud service OneDrive subscriptions with new ad within Windows 10’s File Explorer, to the annoyance of customersUsers are complaining about Microsoft inserting adverts for its OneDrive cloud service directly into Windows 10’s File Explorer.

WikiLeaks founder pledged to help patch bugs outlined in CIA leaks, but many in the tech world say leaks aren’t that troubling and worry instead about Russia tiesWikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s pledge to help Silicon Valley technology companies patch the bugs outlined in leaked CIA files has been met with skepticism from the security community.Assange said he would contact technology companies to privately supply technical details of the hacking techniques and security vulnerabilities that were redacted from the cache of classified documents released to the public. Continue reading...

Julian Assange makes an offering to the tech community as the CIA and the press question his motivations

Packed with death bots and funny one-liners, this adrenaline-fueled, Oculus Touch-controlled arcade shooter for the age of VR is so much funEver since its Kickstarter campaign, launch and then Touch-based update, the Oculus Rift has been searching for that killer game exclusive, but now it’s found it. Robo Recall is finally an Oculus game that is worth playing.

Bill would allow Department of Veterans’ Affairs to disclose personal information to counter ‘misinformation’Proposed laws allowing the government to release veterans’ personal information to publicly correct “misinformation” will undergo an independent privacy assessment.The government’s bill, which passed the lower house with bipartisan support last week, would allow the Department of Veterans’ Affairs to disclose personal information in limited circumstances, including to counter “misinformation in the community” or “mistakes of fact”. Continue reading...

Scrutiny follows BBC investigation that found site took down only 18 out of 100 posts reported for sexualised pictures of childrenFacebook will be questioned by a powerful group of MPs over its failure to remove sexualised images of children following a BBC investigation that found posts reported under its own guidelines were not being taken down.The BBC investigation revealed that of the 100 images and posts it flagged using Facebook’s tools, just 18 were deemed by moderators to breach Facebook’s guidelines, which explicitly bar sexualised images of children. Continue reading...

Documents published by WikiLeaks reveal extent of intelligence agency’s capability for targeting the publicThe trove of information on alleged CIA hacking tools released by Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks organisation, which reveals that the agency maintains the capability to hack consumer devices, will raise many questions for users and technology companies alike.Everyday consumer devices including smartphones running iOS and Android operating systems, Windows and Mac computers, and even smart TVs made by manufacturers such as Samsung have all been targeted by the CIA. Continue reading...

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British foreign secretary says Moscow must ‘show they can be trusted again’ amid fears it is meddling with democratic processesBoris Johnson, the British foreign secretary, will tell Russia to “keep its nose” out of western democratic processes when he visits Moscow in the coming weeks.

Ride-hailing company hit by revelations it used custom-built tool to deceive law enforcement, while latest departure of senior staffer deepens troublesUber’s annus horribilis continued apace Friday, as it was hit with revelations of a secret program to evade law enforcement, the resignation of another top executive and more allegations of workplace discrimination.The New York Times reported that for years Uber used a tool called Greyball to systematically deceive law enforcement officials in cities where its service violated regulations. Officials attempting to hail an Uber during a sting operation were “greyballed” – they might see icons of cars within the app navigating nearby, but no one would come pick them up. The program helped Uber drivers avoid being ticketed. Continue reading...

Parent cut Saint Francis high school in on venture capital deal five years ago after noticing his children using messaging appThe parents of pupils at a Silicon Valley school were sent an unusual letter this week – telling them the school had made at least $24m (£19.6m) in profit from a $15,000 punt on messaging app Snapchat.“I am happy to share some momentous news with you,” Simon Chiu, head of Saint Francis high school, said in the letter. “The school’s investment in Snap has matured and given us a significant boost.” Continue reading...

New penalties for using a handheld phone behind the wheel come into force in the UK this week. How do we compare with the rest of Europe when it comes to breaking the law?As of this week, people caught using their mobile phones while driving in England, Scotland and Wales will face tougher penalties, including twice as many penalty points and increased fines.Related: Tougher penalties begin for drivers using mobile phones Continue reading...

Dating app publishes open letter condemning user for racially abusing a woman he met on the platformTinder has very publicly banned a man for life after he racially abused an Asian woman.Screenshots of text messages the man sent to a woman he met on the dating app circulated this week, drawing widespread condemnation. They show him lose his temper after the woman stops responding, using a racist term of abuse and saying: “Next time don’t give our your number dumb cunt.”

Apparently losing rights to data and legal recourse is not enough of a reason to inspect online contracts. So how can websites get users to read the fine print?The words on the screen, in small type, were as innocent and familiar as a house key. “By clicking Join,” they read, “you agree to abide by our terms of service.” Hundreds of college students tapped the big green “Join” button to become members of NameDrop, a new social network. But according to paragraph 2.3.1 of the terms of service, they’d agreed to give NameDrop their future first-born children.Only a quarter of the 543 students even bothered to look at the fine print. But “look” is not “read”: on average, these more careful joiners spent around a minute with the thousands of words that make up NameDrop’s privacy and service agreements. And then they all agreed to them. Continue reading...

Human error downed sites and services reliant on AWS, as engineer trying to fix billing issues took out far more than they intended to with errant commandAmazon has blamed the outage of its S3 web service, which took down many different sites, services and devices across the internet, on a typo.

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

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Link dies quite frequently, weapons tend to fall apart, and the game looks beautiful. Here’s what we learned about Nintendo Switch’s launch title

Nintendo’s frantic mini-game collection will provide some hilarious multiplayer moments, but there’s not enough in the package to justify its priceWhen Nintendo launched the Wii console in 2006 it made a crucial decision: in most regions of the world, the company bundled its eccentric and innovative hardware with a game: Wii Sports. Fun, accessible versions of bowling, tennis and golf allowed consumers to immediately understand the unique proposition of the machine. Wii Sports was what everyone experienced, talked about and shared – and in doing so, they encouraged friends to buy a Wii too. It was the perfect loss leader.The “party game”, 1-2 Switch, should really be fulfilling that role. As a collection of 28 mini-games, it has been designed to show off the capabilities of the Joy-Con controllers, with their motion sensors, HD rumble abilities and IR camera. All the games are quick and intuitive; the package is beautifully presented with fun videos showing how each task works. The emphasis is on interpersonal competition; all the games are for at least two players and most require you to look at each other rather than the screen. Here, the console becomes the facilitator rather than the focus of fun. Continue reading...

John’s wife wants to replace her Microsoft Surface RT, which she uses in her job as a tutor. Are there any affordable Intel-based tablets up to the job?My wife has used a Microsoft Surface RT tablet for a few years in her job as a tutor. She has found its size and the touch keyboard invaluable in her planning and writing up of lessons, especially as this often happens in the car between pupils. Unfortunately, it is becoming less reliable, and much slower, and she is looking for a replacement. She has looked at the new Surface Pros, but does not want to spend more than £500. She requires Microsoft Office, a long battery life and portability.By the way, I also wanted to thank you for the advice you gave my daughter in What sort of tablet should I buy for drawing? Niamh bought a Wacom tablet and is very pleased. JohnMicrosoft launched the Surface RT in 2012 when the tablet market looked promising. It was the first tablet to run Windows on an ARM chip, which provided long battery life. It also made it incompatible with all the traditional software written for Intel x86 versions of Windows, including viruses. Continue reading...

I’ve ditched my Xbox 360 and passed on my Game Boy, but nothing will part me from Nintendo’s late 90s classic – not even the SwitchTwenty years ago, the Nintendo 64 came to Europe for the first time. Though it rarely makes it onto top-ten lists of home consoles, and probably isn’t even in the top three just from Nintendo, the N64 changed my life forever.Some might not consider the N64 to have acquired that retro status afforded to the likes of the NES (1983) or Sega Mega Drive (1988), but for those of us born in the 90s this was our first generation of home consoles: the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn (1994), and the Nintendo 64 (1997). It was a pivotal generation too, the first to really focus on 3D graphics, representing a change arguably bigger than any since. HD is great, but more pixels will never have the same effect as an extra dimension. Continue reading...

After hacks affecting the personal details of 1 billion users, the chief executive loses cash bonus of $2m and gives up stock awards worth millions moreYahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer will lose her annual bonus and the company’s top lawyer has been removed over their mishandling of security breaches that exposed the personal information of more than 1 billion users.Mayer’s cash bonus is worth about $2m a year and her personal cost from the security flaws increased when the board also accepted her offer to relinquish an annual stock award worth millions of dollars. Continue reading...

At £280 the Switch is a gamble, but Nintendo has again done its idiosyncratic best to challenge the way we think about games hardwareNintendo remains a puzzling phenomenon for a lot of modern gamers. The company never makes powerful consoles, or cool consoles; it never pushes the processing envelope, and it always seems a little eccentric when it comes to online infrastructure. Unlike Sony and Microsoft, it isn’t trying to make gaming PCs designed to resemble dedicated games machines – it just makes games machines.The Switch is the latest evolution of an idea Nintendo has been playing with since the arrival of the Wii in 2006 – a console for everyone, with an interesting, accessible and flexible interface. The console itself is basically a tablet, and completely portable, but plug it into the stand and the action immediately appears on your TV. It is a weird hybrid, a new mid-point between home and handheld. Continue reading...

The industry hype around the classic ‘dumbphone’ betrays a pointed fact – there is only so much you can improve a smartphone that already does it allMobile World Congress – the showcase of the most cutting-edge technology on the planet – is in full swing in Barcelona this week. Phones, wearables and everything else with a microchip is showing off fantastic new features. But all anyone really seems interested in is a remake of a phone from 17 years ago, the Nokia 3310.There are a few ways to look at the Nokia 3310. It could just be a marketing ploy, or a Hollywood-esque remake because the industry has run out of ideas. Or maybe it’s trying to tap into the feeling that modern life is too connected, harking back to a simpler time. But whatever you think the Nokia 3310 is, it tells us something interesting about the state of the smartphone industry in 2017. Continue reading...

Sexual misconduct, discrimination and retaliation are rampant and often ignored in tech startups that reject HR practices, women and people of color sayHaana was so repulsed by what happened to her, she covered up her mirror so she wouldn’t have to look at herself. The Silicon Valley tech worker said that after drinks with startup colleagues last year, a male executive at her company put his hand up her shirt and groped her while they walked down the street.“I felt disgusted for months after that,” said Haana, who requested that the Guardian not include her full name or identify the small tech startup where she used to do marketing. “It affects me on a level that I wish it didn’t.” Continue reading...

Technology group to open new 210-hectare campus as part of £2.5bn investment and plans to double workforceDyson, the technology company, is to undergo a dramatic expansion in the UK by opening a new 210 hectare (517 acre) campus as part of a £2.5bn investment that will support its development of new battery technologies and robotics.The company, led by the billionaire inventor Sir James Dyson, will increase its UK geographical footprint tenfold by developing the campus on a former Ministry of Defence airfield and intends to at least double its workforce of 3,500 over the next few years. Continue reading...

Giving Fund platform says it allows donations to ‘over a million charities’ – but few actually get funds because they aren’t registered with company, suit saysCharitable donations made through PayPal’s Giving Fund platform may never reach their intended recipients, a federal class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday in Chicago has alleged.PayPal’s charitable platform, which the company says raised more than $7bn in 2016, claims to allow individuals to give directly to “over a million charities”. But only a fraction of those charities actually receive the donations, the lawsuit alleges, because they aren’t registered with PayPal. Donations made to non-registered charities are held by PayPal for six months before being transferred to other not-for-profit organizations, according to the suit. Continue reading...

Exclusive: AJ Vandermeyden paints picture of a hostile work environment that promoted less-qualified men and retaliated against her for raising concernsA female engineer at Tesla has accused Elon Musk’s car company of ignoring her complaints of “pervasive harassment”, paying her a lower salary than men doing the same work, promoting less qualified men over her and retaliating against her for raising concerns.The allegations of AJ Vandermeyden, who still works at the celebrated electric car manufacturer, paint a picture of a hostile work environment dominated by men where inappropriate sexual behavior is tolerated and women face numerous barriers to advance their careers. Continue reading...

Spiritual successor to classic RPG Planescape: Torment raised $5m in crowdfunding three years ago, and the complex adventure is worth the waitTorment: Tides of Numenera exemplifies that most modern of creative success stories: the Kickstarter smash hit. Developed by inXile Entertainment (the team behind Wasteland 2) it was launched on the crowdfunding platform in 2013 and reached its full $900,000 target after only six hours. By the end of the campaign it had raised almost $5m.Why such fervid interest? Torment: Tides of Numenera is the spiritual successor to the renowned 1999 role-playing game Planescape: Torment, which, alongside other classics like Baldur’s Gate, helped redefine the genre. Set in the complex Planescape D&D campaign, its narrative took in a multiverse of coexisting dimensions, it featured a rich cast of well-drawn characters and an emphasis on dialogue rather than battle. Continue reading...

From a young age, humans love to press buttons that light up and make a noise. The thrill of positive feedback lies at the heart of addiction to gambling, games, and social media

Setback is the latest sign of turmoil at Uber, which recently found itself in a separate sexual harassment firestorm and faces a major lawsuit from GoogleThe top engineering executive at Uber has resigned, adding to the company’s turmoil a week after the company found itself in an unrelated sexual harassment firestorm.Amit Singhal, whose hire was announced just five weeks ago, failed to disclose that he had left his previous job at Google because of a sexual harassment allegation, according to the tech blog Recode. Continue reading...

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As the 3310 returns, a brief history of Nokia mobiles, featuring the first brick phone, the birth of T9 texting, the first to feature Snake and 41-megapixel phones

The ‘indestructible’ handset returns, complete with one-month standby time, colour screen and bags of nostalgiaThe rumours are true – the Nokia 3310 is back, and it even has Snake. The updated version of the early noughties icon, famed for its seemingly indestructible qualities, was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Sunday.Anticipation of the device, a phone that doesn’t even have 3G, has been high ever since news of its release leaked earlier this year. The relaunched 3310 is produced by new mobile firm HMD Global, which licensed the Nokia brand last year. HMD is filled with key ex-Nokia people, and the phone appears to have lost none of the charm and identity of the 17-year-old original. Continue reading...

Accusations that an ex-Google engineer stole trade secrets and took them to Uber may pose an existential threat in the race to get self-driving cars on the roadWhen Anthony Levandowski loped on to the stage to accept the Hot New Startup award at an industry awards show this month, the trucker hat perched on his head served as a cringeworthy nod to the millions of drivers his self-driving truck company is poised to leave jobless.Three weeks later, it is the pioneering engineer of self-driving car technology whose job could be in jeopardy, and the lawsuit he is named in could pose an existential threat to an increasingly vulnerable Uber. Continue reading...

Automation is on the march on farms across the world, but it is costly, and may not come soon enough to fill the gapOctopus-like robots are plucking strawberries in Spain, in the US machines are vacuuming apples off the trees, and in the UK they are feeding and milking cows. Robots are taking over fields around the world, and last week food and rural affairs secretary Andrea Leadsom suggested they could help replace the thousands of EU workers who currently help put food on British tables.And it is not just Brexit that is forcing the agricultural industry to embrace the next phase of mechanisation. Farmers are already having to rethink their operations in the face of higher minimum pay – mainly a result of the national living wage for over-25s, which came into effect last year. Continue reading...

How much is it? What are those controllers like? How many games are available? Your questions answered

Leigh Alexander finds out how animal tracking tech is changing understanding of our own species too. And how do you go about QR-coding a bumblebee?

Alphabet-owned company Waymo says former employee Anthony Levandowski stole secrets before founding Otto, Uber’s self-driving truck brand

• BT will start broadcasting international regional finals next month

Susan Fowler’s allegations of sex discrimination at taxi app firm has sparked new wave of users deleting accountLess than a month after public outrage against Uber hit such peaks that it was forced to automate its account deletion process, the cab company is again facing a wave of protest and renewed calls for users to delete their accounts.This time, the fuel being added to the #deleteuber campaign is the allegations by software engineer Susan Fowler of continuous sexual harassment and discrimination at the firm. Continue reading...

Emma uses an old 17in laptop for watching TV and DVDs. Would it be better to replace it with a similar laptop, a desktop, or perhaps even buy a TV?We don’t have a traditional TV set at home. Instead, we watch TV programmes and DVDs on a 17in Dell Studio 17 laptop, which we plug into our Denon hi-fi system to get decent sound. My husband also uses the laptop for a desktop publishing project.Unfortunately, our Dell is nearly 10 years old. It’s running Windows Vista, the internet is painfully slow, and the DVD player is starting to become unreliable.The Dell Studio 17 was a great machine in its day, but your version sounds as though it has come to the end of its natural life. In theory, you could prolong it by installing Windows 10, an SSD, some extra memory and a new DVD drive. (The SSD would go in the spare drive bay.) Continue reading...

Admittedly, the game is only available in Japan, but the new console’s limited internal memory could prove annoyingIt could probably only happen to Nintendo. While other console manufacturers have dutifully stuffed their consoles with ever more expansive hard drives, the Kyoto-based veteran has always been somewhat penurious with storage. Its next release, the delightfully eccentric Switch, contains only 32GB of internal memory, around 4GB of which is reserved for the operating system. Sure, this probably keeps the manufacturing costs down, but it presents a problem. This week, the official Japanese Switch page revealed a host of forthcoming titles, together with their file sizes. One, a double pack featuring Dragon Quest Heroes I and II, comes in at ... 32GB. Which means if you buy the digital version from the Nintendo eShop, it won’t fit on your console.There are some mitigating factors here. Dragon Quest Heroes I & II collects two full-size PlayStation releases into one package, so it’s an unnaturally large proposition. The file sizes for other games were mostly around 1GB to 5GB, with Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild coming in at 13.4GB. Also, unlike the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the Switch doesn’t demand that physical games are installed on to the hard drive before you can play, so if you buy a boxed copy of Dragon Quest Heroes I & II, you won’t have any issues. But if you do plan on making a lot of eShop purchases on your new machine, you’re going to have to buy a MicroSD card for extra storage space. A 128gb card comes in at around £35. Continue reading...

Ubisoft’s multiplayer-focused fighting game is a single-minded simulation of melee battle, with an emphasis on epic physical confrontationsThere was an interview on Radio 4 with an ex-boxer recently, in which she spoke about the peculiar nature of the sport. One thing she said really stood out “Boxing teaches you to use violence as a resource.” That phrase describes the experience of playing For Honor pretty well. This is a game about learning to use deadly force in order to navigate through a world where nothing else matters but conflict. For Honor has the purity, depth and bloody grace of a martial art.The set-up is certainly as simple as a sport. The player selects from three warring factions – the knights, the samurai and the vikings, and then fights everyone else, either in the single-player mode or online. The former is effectively a training exercise, teaching you the basics of combat, as well as the special-move sets specific to all of the available classes of warrior, unlockable during play. There is a kind of story, about factions battling to control land and food, but really, you’re just stomping through a series of beautifully realised historical environments bludgeoning people, while looking for collectibles (this is a Ubisoft game after all). It’s basic stuff, but it does feature a range of breathtaking set-piece encounters from castle sieges to village raids, all drawn in gritty, pulverising detail. Continue reading...

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The list recognises businesses for their services to creativity and innovation and includes startups in the film, tech and gaming industriesAn agency that creates beer from clouds and a production company focusing on disabled talent are among the 10 businesses to have been named in Creative England’s Future Leaders list, picked from the CE50, which is published today.The companies were chosen by a panel of creative industry judges including Emily Forbes, founder and CEO of Seenit, a crowdsourcing video platform (whose company was named in the list last year), actor, writer and director Simon Bird, who played Will Mackenzie in the Inbetweeners, MediaCom UK CEO Josh Krichefski, AO.com group brand director Andrew KirkCaldy and Noirin Carmody, founder and COO at Revolution Software, for their services to creativity and innovation. Continue reading...