Technology | The Guardian

This affectionate spoof of early 90s gaming scores high in nostalgia, but lags without comedic heavy-hittersHere is a throwaway space spoof, an affectionate send-up of the naffness of early 90s video games, that lovingly recreates the vintage details with its production design and fight choreography, but is troublingly low on scripted gags. It plays out in two dimensions: virtual and real life. Inside a computer game, explorer Max Cloud is an intergalactic hero, a preposterous macho knucklehead in latex, sturdily performed by actor and martial arts expert Scott Adkins, who has appeared in a few of the Marvels. I did wonder if an actor with the comic chops for some megaton silliness might have done some heavier lifting here.Meanwhile, in actual Brooklyn, teenage gamer Sarah (Isabelle Allen) is hooked on the Max Cloud video game. After a fight with her dad she is mysteriously teleported into the game – and into the body of a minor character, chef Jake (Elliot James Langridge). You might consider this a waste of a female lead – putting her into the body of a male actor – but there she stays for most of the movie. For any chance of making it back to her real life she must complete the game with the help of her friend playing in her bedroom (Franz Drameh). John Hannah is painfully unfunny as ultra baddie Revengor, who wants to destroy planet Earth over a past snub. Continue reading...

Regulator cautions public over risk of products promising high returns from cryptoassetsConsumers should be prepared to lose all their money if they invest in schemes promising high returns from digital currencies such as bitcoin, a City watchdog has warned.The volatile nature of cryptoassets was highlighted again on Monday as bitcoin dropped 28% from Friday’s record high of $42,000, having doubled its value in less than a month. Despite the day’s decline to $30,200, bitcoin is still only at its lowest level since the first day of the new year. Continue reading...

Amazon stops hosting social network, used as communication hub by US Capitol riotersThe “free speech” social network Parler, popular with Donald Trump supporters, has been forced off the internet after Amazon pulled its hosting services.The Twitter clone, which gained notoriety as a communication hub for the rioters who stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday, had already suffered a major hit to its reach over the weekend, as first Google and then Apple suspended its app from their stores. Continue reading...

The Czech playwright Karel Čapek coined the expression for artificial men in 1921. Now they are far more than science fiction“Listen Josef,” said the Czech playwright Karel Čapek to his brother. “I have an idea for a play.”Josef, an artist of some renown, was painting furiously and unimpressed by his brother’s intrusion. “What kind of play?” he asked, sharply. Karel set out the plot. In the future, humans have created synthetic, humanoid creatures to increase productivity in the factories and fight wars on the battlefield. Built as slave workers, they will eventually rise up and wipe out the human race. Continue reading...

After 2020, anyone would be forgiven for wanting to escape Earth, and Mars, the moon and the asteroid belt beckonThis Nasa telescope, which is to replace the Hubble, has been subject to many delays – its first planned launch was in 2007. A March 2020 takeoff was delayed due to Covid, while its initial $500m budget has spiralled to more than $10bn (£7.4bn). It is a more sensitive telescope than the Hubble and once operational it will be able to observe the formation of some of the first galaxies. It will be launched on a European Ariane 5 rocket on 31 October. Continue reading...

Big investors are eyeing the once volatile cryptocurrency as a hedge against inflationBitcoin is back, along with the debate over its value. The price of the digital currency is soaring and last week it hit more than $40,000 for the first time, having doubled in less than a month.Its price has jumped by more than 700% since the pandemic was first declared in March last year, rising from about $5,000. Continue reading...

Gates’ Cascade Investment fund teams up with US private equity firm on offer for Signature AviationBill Gates has joined a £3bn bidding war to buy the world’s largest private jet operator just as he prepares to publish his new book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.Cascade Investment, the fund that manages much of Gates’s $134bn personal fortune, announced on Friday it had teamed up with US private equity firm Blackstone in a bid for British private jet operator Signature Aviation. Continue reading...

With the nation working and learning from home, the need for full-fibre broadband is greater than everFree full-fibre, publicly owned broadband was never supposed to be the flagship policy of Labour’s doomed 2019 election campaign. Earlier in the year the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, had been touring the country and hearing people complain that poor broadband was at least as much of a problem as poor transport links, and possibly a bigger one. Back in 2017, a report by University College London had explored “universal basic services” – that is, where the rights of citizenship include unconditional access to free services funded by progressive taxation. “This would enable access to work opportunities,” the study noted, “as well as participation in our democracy as informed citizens.”Related: Telecoms sector has 'no belief' UK will meet broadband targets, MPs find Continue reading...

Platforms have long let his dangerous posts stand – and researchers say the Capitol attack is ‘exactly what we expected’In the 24 hours since the US Capitol in Washington was seized by a Trump-supporting mob disputing the results of the 2020 election, American social media companies have barred the president from their platforms for spreading falsehoods and inciting the crowd.Facebook, Snapchat and Twitch suspended Donald Trump indefinitely. Twitter locked his account temporarily. Multiple platforms removed his messages. Continue reading...

Dating deception makes for regretfully moreish listening, as the MTV hit becomes a podcast. Plus: untangling the events which led to the death of White Helmets founder James Le MesurierCatfish: The Podcast

Government failures will leave thousands of rural homes with slow broadband, spending watchdog saysBoris Johnson’s promise to deliver nationwide “turbocharged” broadband by 2025 will be missed because of a catalogue of government failures, parliament’s spending watchdog has concluded.In a timely report released on Friday as many children struggle to gain access to remote learning during lockdown, the public accounts committee has criticised the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) for failing to make any “meaningful progress” in delivering policies or legal changes to achieve a rapid rollout of gigabit broadband. Continue reading...

Cryptocurrency doubles value in less than a month as supporters say asset is starting to supplant goldBitcoin has surged above the $40,000 (£29,500) mark for the first time in its history after doubling its value in less than a month.The record comes just days after the cryptocurrency hit an all-time high of more than $34,800 on Sunday, which was also the 12th anniversary of the bitcoin network being created. Bitcoin first breached the $20,000 mark in mid-December. Continue reading...

How the Tesla and SpaceX chief rose to the top in the business world, in 10 steps

Facebook CEO accuses president of intending to undermine peaceful transition of power

With a rise in the availability of EV rentals – and a marked increase in charging stations – Oliver Pelling set out on an 800km trip along the Great Ocean RoadThe first blunder of my all-electric road trip occurs in Lorne, some 145km from my Melbourne home.I know, thanks to the PlugShare app – which maps most of the publicly available charging points in Australia – that there is a charger at Lorne Visitor Information Centre. What I don’t know, until I get there, is that this particular charger doesn’t fit my particular car. Continue reading...

Despite her record as a writer and activist, what may have begun as a joke has gained traction, and should make us ask questions that go beyond the credulity of Gen Z

We asked Guardian readers what kept you giggling through a year unlike any other. Here’s what you told usTodrick Hall’s Covid cover of his own song, Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels comes front of mind. – ChrisR22 Continue reading...

Station was banned from the platform for 12 hours but insists it has ‘robust editorial controls’YouTube has reversed a short-lived ban of the digital station TalkRadio from its platform, about 12 hours after it removed the organisation’s channel for what it said were breaches of its community guidelines.The station, part of Rupert Murdoch’s TalkSport network, said it had not been told by the platform what the most recent breach was. A TalkRadio spokesperson said: “We urgently await a detailed response from Google/YouTube about the nature of the breach that has led to our channel being removed from its platform. Continue reading...

Rishi Sunak could prevent steep rise in unemployment if he supports move, says thinktankWhen Target Publishing cut staff pay after the first coronavirus lockdown last year, the magazine group knew it had to make a positive gesture to its employees. So it introduced a four-day week.“I felt better in myself that I was able to give something back to match the sacrifice everyone had made,” says Target’s founder and owner, David Cann. Faced with sliding advertising sales and several cancelled projects, the publisher of 20 titles including Natural Lifestyle and Health Food Business had cut pay for its 30 staff by 20%. Continue reading...

Employees signed cards to join the Alphabet Workers Union, to ensure work at a fair wage and without fear of abuseMore than 200 Google employees in the United States have formed a workers’ union, the first group at a big tech company to do so as the industry faces a reckoning over years of unchecked power.The elected leaders of the Alphabet Workers Union announced the organization in a New York Times opinion piece on Monday, saying they aimed to ensure employees work at a fair wage, without fear of abuse, retaliation or discrimination. Continue reading...

My father, Mike Bennett, who has died aged 91, was a civil engineer who built dams, power stations and roads all over the world and was involved in the construction of the Thames Barrier.He was born in Burnage, Manchester, to Edna (nee Gilpin), a homemaker and keen golfer, and Brian Bennett, a banker. The family moved to London when Mike was a baby, where his father joined the Midland Bank, and then to Yorkshire to escape the Blitz. Continue reading...

The early days of computer programming, and the IT worker stereotypeOn 26 October 1969, the Observer Magazine attempted to get to grips with the burgeoning computer revolution (‘Computer Takeover’).‘What then is a computer?’ asked John Davy. ‘It has been well described as an obedient, very moronic clerk with an exceptionally good memory.’ Well, we’ve all met one of those. Continue reading...

The tech giants’ law-free bonanza is coming to an end on both sides of the Atlantic, but let’s speed up the processIt’s always risky making predictions about the tech industry, but this year looks like being different, at least in the sense that there are two safe bets. One is that the attempts to regulate the tech giants that began last year will intensify; the second that we will be increasingly deluged by sanctimonious cant from Facebook & co as they seek to avoid democratic curbing of their unaccountable power.On the regulation front, last year in the US, Alphabet, Google’s corporate owner, found itself facing major antitrust suits from 38 states as well as from the Department of Justice. On this side of the pond, there are preparations for a Digital Markets Unit with statutory powers that will be able to neatly sidestep the tricky definitional questions of what constitutes a monopoly in a digital age. Instead, the unit will decide on a case-by-case basis whether a particular tech company has “strategic market status” if it possesses “substantial, entrenched market power in at least one digital activity” or if it acts as an online “gateway” for other businesses. And if a company is judged to have this status, then penalties and regulations will be imposed on it. Continue reading...

Institutional investors help cryptocurrency to 47% gain in December as interest in US dollar declinesBitcoin has continued its end-of-year Santa Claus rally, surging to a new high of more than $28,500.The cryptocurrency gained more than 5% to hit $28,572 on Wednesday. It is up 47% since the start of December and is on track for its biggest monthly gain since May 2019. Continue reading...

Manufacturers’ share prices will be dependent on their ability to avoid losses on ‘stranded assets’, says analyst

About 25 million logged on to the PC gaming platform Steam on the biggest ever Christmas Day for the video games industryThis Christmas has been the biggest ever for the video games industry, as lockdown, technological leaps and new consoles combine to bring more interest than ever to the sector.Steam, the PC gaming platform, recorded its largest ever Christmas Day, according to public stats, with almost 25 million people logged on to the service at 3.10pm UK time, more than 6 million of whom were actively playing a game concurrently. That was up from the 15 million who logged on to the service at once on Christmas Day 2019. Continue reading...

Security, data and the services sector are still in limbo after a ‘thin’ agreement struck to avoid disasterDowning Street’s chief Brexit negotiator, Lord Frost, exhausted from months of intense talks, could not hide his glee on Saturday as he hailed the Brexit deal struck between the EU and Brussels as “one of the biggest and broadest agreements ever”. Its effect, he said, would be to allow the UK to “set its own laws again”.“There’s no more role for the European court of justice, there’s no direct effects of EU law, there’s no alignment of any kind, and we’re out of the single market and out of the customs union, just as the manifesto said we would be,” he declared. “This should be the beginning of a moment of national renewal for us. All choices are in our hands as a country and it’s now up to us to decide how we use them and how we go forward in the future.” Continue reading...

An online platform where journalists sell content directly to subscribers is luring eminent voices away from traditional mediaWay back in March, at the beginning of the first lockdown, I fell to wondering what a columnist, academic and blogger under house arrest might usefully do for the duration of his imprisonment. My eye fell on my blog, Memex 1.1, which has been a harmless presence on the web since the mid-1990s and a source of puzzlement to journalistic and academic colleagues alike. The hacks unanimously shared Dr Johnson’s view that “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money”, while my academic colleagues thought it peculiar to waste one’s energy writing anything that would not figure in scholarly citation indices. The idea that one might maintain a blog simply because one enjoyed doing it never crossed their minds.So there it was, with a modest readership, which occasionally spiked as it caught some brief wave of attention. Given that many people were going to be locked down like me, I wondered if the regularity of receiving the blog as an email every morning might be welcome. The thought came from observing how Dave Winer’s wonderful blog, Scripting News, drew an even wider readership after he offered it as a daily email to subscribers. So I began looking for an easy way of doing something similar. Continue reading...

We went down a YouTube rabbit hole, Alan Partridge made a triumphant return and a singular look at cold war espionage came with an irresistible earworm. Plus more of the year’s best pods

Class action claims weak security allowed hackers to take over the smart cameras used on doorbells and in homesDozens of people who say they were subjected to death threats, racial slurs, and blackmail after their in-home Ring smart cameras were hacked are suing the company over “horrific” invasions of privacy.A new class action lawsuit, which combines a number of cases filed in recent years, alleges that lax security measures at Ring, which is owned by Amazon, allowed hackers to take over their devices. Ring provides home security in the form of smart cameras that are often installed on doorbells or inside people’s homes. Continue reading...

Fraud worries as UK company Now:Pensions says ‘third-party contractor’ posted personal details of clients to online public forumAbout 30,000 customers of Now:Pensions face an anxious Christmas after a serious data breach at the pensions provider led to their sensitive personal details being posted on the internet.In an email sent to affected customers, the workplace pensions firm warned that names, postal and email addresses, birth dates and National Insurance numbers all appeared in a public forum online. Continue reading...

A queer coming-of-age story charmed us, a balletic shoot-em-up raised our adrenaline and the star game of lockdown provided a desert-island escape from real life

This is a security failure of enormous proportions – and a wake-up call. The US must rethink its cybersecurity protocols

As the push to diversify the IT sector picks up speed, so too has awareness of unconscious bias. Can technology-enabled ‘blind’ recruitment do a better job of identifying talent?It’s no surprise that decades ago, you were more likely to get a job if your name was Smith rather than Singh – as anti-racism campaigners found. In these more enlightened times, companies have strategies to beat a kneejerk reaction to an unfamiliar name, the “wrong” gender, or the suspect “gut feeling”.Yet the diversity statistics suggest these strategies haven’t yet proved effective in the tech sector. Something certainly hasn’t been going right – tech remains notoriously male, especially higher up the company rungs. Women make up just 20% of IT specialists and just 12% of leadership roles, according to latest analysis by the British Computer Society’s Chartered Institute for IT, and numbers have budged very little over the past five years. Continue reading...

Musk says Tim Cook ‘refused to take the meeting’ when a struggling Tesla could have been bought for a songElon Musk has said he contacted Apple Inc’s Tim Cook “during the darkest days of the Model 3 program” to discuss the possibility of Apple buying the Tesla electric car company for “1/10th of our current value … He [Cook] refused to take the meeting”.Musk’s comment followed reports that Apple is working on producing an electric car with advanced battery technology. In Twitter threads, Musk and others questioned the nature the technology, including what was referred to in reports as a “monocell” battery with lithium iron phosphate chemistry: Continue reading...

The site is best known for charging fees for nude content but making money off it is hard workThis time last year Jah Bella* was doing it tough. She had fled an abusive relationship, was looking after her newborn daughter and was struggling to find work in far north Queensland.“Every single regular job that I had, I was getting sexually harassed in some way,” she says. “I would either get fired or I’d have to leave once I reported it.” Continue reading...

Threatening messages led to monitoring of phone that unearthed evidence of cyber-attack against Qatar-based network

Select committee says strategy at risk from lack of adequate planning and investmentThe telecoms sector has “no genuine belief” the government will be able to meet its broadband targets, a parliamentary inquiry has found, despite those targets having been cut just weeks ago.In its national infrastructure strategy, published in late November, the government announced plans to connect 85% of the country with ultrafast gigabit broadband, which usually requires a fibre-to-the-home connection, by 2025. Continue reading...

Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel opens virtual reality film Symphony in MadridThe two huge white trailers that sit between the Royal Palace and the Royal theatre in central Madrid form an unlikely pair of portals to a universe of boundless visual and aural possibility.But step out of the December drizzle and in through their doors and you will find yourself crawling inside a violin, sitting in an orchestra before one of the most famous conductors in the world and bathed in a stream of lysergic images, all to the strains of Beethoven, Mahler and Leonard Bernstein. Continue reading...

Breach blamed on Russia saw hackers gain access to systems used by top department officials, says Ron WydenDozens of email accounts at the treasury department were compromised in a massive breach of US government agencies being blamed on Russia, with hackers breaking into systems used by the department’s highest-ranking officials, a senator said Monday after being briefed on the matter.Senator Ron Wyden, of Oregon, provided new details of the hack following a briefing to the Senate finance committee by the IRS and treasury department. Continue reading...

It has been a bumpy ride for Apple’s Project Titan, but sources suggest a passenger vehicle may not be far offApple is moving forward with self-driving car technology and is targeting 2024 to produce a passenger vehicle that could include its own battery technology, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.The iPhone maker’s automotive efforts, known as Project Titan, have proceeded unevenly since 2014 when it first started to design its own vehicle from scratch. At one point, Apple scaled back the effort to focus on software and reassessed its goals. Doug Field, an Apple veteran who had worked at Tesla, returned to oversee the project in 2018 and laid off 190 people from the team in 2019. Continue reading...

Elon Musk’s car firm becomes stock market’s sixth-largest member on joiningTesla has joined Wall Street’s prestigious S&P 500 share index as its sixth-largest member, immediately rubbing shoulders with the likes of Amazon, Apple and Facebook.Shares in the electric carmaker fell by more than 5% on its debut day on Monday, amid widespread investor concern about the potential impact on global trade of the mutant coronavirus strain identified in the UK. Continue reading...

Top luxury noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones – but at a price that demands perfectionApple’s first own-brand noise-cancelling headphones are heavy on the luxury and sound – but also on price.The AirPods Max cost £549 and are the most expensive of Apple’s headphones line that includes the £159 AirPods, £249 AirPods Pro and sets from the Beats brand such as the £270 Solo Pro and £300 Studio 3 Wireless. Continue reading...

Instead of gathering around the holiday table, we’ll be gathering around our laptops for awkward silences and Zoom fatigueYour laptop screen will be a window into your soul this holiday season, so take advantage of the opportunity to make your life appear under control. An upside to any global pandemic is that you don’t have to clean up for guests. When it comes to messes, it’s “out of screen, out of mind”. Meanwhile, you can create an idealized – and/or completely false – vision of your home life: fill the area behind you with thick volumes of poetry, or hardcore exercise equipment, or the only plant you have ever managed to keep alive for more than a week. Continue reading...

Nearly a week after federal agencies were targeted, investigators are still unclear on what information may have been stolen

Covid-19 pushed many into poverty but brought huge benefits for some of the wealthiest, renewing calls for fairer taxes

Users of smart speakers around the world can hear monarch’s speech without lifting a fingerFans of the Queen’s Christmas Day broadcast will be able to listen without lifting a finger – and not just because the TV’s been tuned to BBC One since The Gruffalo at 8.55am. Alexa users will be able to summon Her Majesty into their living rooms from 3pm GMT with the words “Alexa, play the Queen’s Christmas Day message”.The privilege isn’t reserved just for Brits. Anyone with their Amazon Echo set to English – be that British, American, Australian, Canadian or Indian – will be able to listen to the speech, Amazon has announced. Continue reading...

Microsoft’s president says NSO Group enables more nation-states to deploy cyber-attacks, including against journalists and activistsMicrosoft has called on the incoming Biden administration to weigh in on a high-profile legal case involving WhatsApp and NSO Group, the Israeli spyware firm that the US software company said was helping to proliferate cyber-weapons.Comparing NSO Group to 21st-century mercenaries, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, claimed that the rise of private companies that engineer cybersecurity attacks meant that an increasing number of nation-states could now deploy cyber-attacks – including against journalists and human rights activists. Continue reading...

Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks say they had to fight for fair pay and faced retaliation for advocating for changePinterest announced this week it would pay more than $20m to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit brought by a female executive. But to two Black former employees who had previously lodged similar complaints, the settlement represents a “slap in the face”. Continue reading...

Ryan’s World ‘child influencer’ also made estimated $200m from branded toys and clothingA nine-year-old boy has made nearly $30m in a year from “unboxing” and reviewing toys and games on YouTube to hold the title of highest-paid YouTuber for the third year running.Ryan Kaji, from Texas, made $29.5m (£22m) from his YouTube channel Ryan’s World, as well as a further estimated $200m from Ryan’s World branded toys and clothing, including Marks & Spencer pyjamas. He also signed an undisclosed, but likely multimillion dollar, deal for his own TV series on Nickelodeon. Continue reading...